


First Time For Everything: Touch - Ianto

by Criccieth



Series: First Time For Everything [2]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Backstory, Domestic Violence, Episode: s02e12 Fragments, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Sexual Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:08:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 38,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23584366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Criccieth/pseuds/Criccieth
Summary: All relationships have their stages and their first moments. This is one of them.The first time Ianto purposefully touches Harkness is the second time they meet. The sheer living warmth of the man seems to seep into his bones and he wants to touch him again.
Relationships: Ianto Jones/Original Character(s), Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, Lisa Hallett/Ianto Jones, Suzie Costello/Owen Harper
Series: First Time For Everything [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693690
Comments: 21
Kudos: 52





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: PLEASE PLEASE READ - This series as a whole deals with adult situations and dark theme. This story contains direct mention of domestic abuse (both physical and sexual) and self-harm.
> 
> (Practical note - Dwr Cymru is "Welsh Water" - the water board that controls and delivers water throughout Wales.)

The first time Ianto purposefully touches Harkness is the second time they meet. The sheer living warmth of the man seems to seep into his bones and he wants to touch him again. 

_The sound is coming closer. A heavy **thud-thud-thud** and he knows what it is. They are hunting him, hunting them all. The battle proper started when the Cybermen began grabbing Torchwood staff and the word ‘conversion’ echoed through the corridors. He has a sick feeling he knows what that means now. _

_At first it was only Cybermen they faced, and it’s a measure of how desperate the situation has become that he can use the word ‘only’ there. By the time the Daleks entered the fray and made things ten times worse, the Cybermen had already beaten the humans back twice. Since then, the three-way battle has raged throughout the building, and every time he uses the comm. system there are fewer voices answering his call._

_He doesn’t know where Lisa is. She was in a meeting two floors down when everything went to hell and he **doesn’t know where she is**. Neither she nor her PA has answered over the comm. and no-one else he’s spoken to was on Floor 10 when the battle started. _

_Their lines have fallen back time and time again, repelled by both the Daleks and the Cybermen. Twice now, they’ve been on the verge of being wiped out (deleted, exterminated) by one side or the other only to have the third and final side of this maelstrom launch an assault on their fellow aliens, by chance allowing the ragtag band of humans to escape. Moving down was impossible so even though it’s going to trap them, they are moving up, floor by floor. He hopes that some of his colleagues on the floors below being driven downward since then there is at least a chance that some of them will get out alive. Because he doesn’t think there is any hope left for himself and his five surviving companions._

_If he’d been in the Archives when everything went to Hell he’d have been able to get into the Weapons Section and then they might have a chance. As it is, they are almost unarmed. The Cybergun is heavy in his hands, a spoil of battle snatched from the first defunct Cyberman they found. The others forced it on him on the grounds that he is the only one with any field experience. Fortunately, given just how short his time in the field was, it’s easy enough to use. Despite the hysterical reports earlier that stated that no weapon seemed to affect the initial Daleks from the Sphere, it’s dealt with both sets of invaders adequately; but the power level is on the wane and he doubts it will last them much longer. When they met up with Lucas, who has far more field-hours than Ianto, he had a second Cybergun. Maggie is holding it now, but it’s clearly got even less charge than Ianto’s._  
  
_They’ve had to give up on bringing their wounded with them and that is tearing at him inside. Lucas, the only survivor of another tiny band, When, on the previous floor, they'd had to abandon Lucas and Stephanie with the corpses of six others and one fallen Cybermen, they’d left Steph holding Lucas’s pistol, which had proven so useless against either set of foes. The first shot sounded before they even reached the stairs, the second echoing faintly up the stairwell moments later._

_So now they are on Floor 16, trying to find signs of life or anything that they can use to help themselves and the floor is shaking slightly under his feet as the phalanx of Cybermen turn the corner and he knows then that something is wrong. Because although there are six figures marching towards him as always, the two in the lead are not identical to the others. One is Lisa, shrouded in silvery metal, more of it wrapped around her head leaving only her beautiful face revealed, warm brown eyes gone cold and blank. The other is a man, towering above Lisa, a good four inches taller than Ianto himself. He’s heavy-set, green eyes empty and dead, close-cropped red hair framing a face that should be pleasant to look at but for the familiar anger twisting it into ugliness. Blood covers his chest, coursing in rivulets from the hole torn in his throat. Oliver._

_Ianto can’t move. He can hear the others behind him, falling back again, firing past him but everything seems to pass through the foremost couple and he can’t **move** and everything else fades away until all he can see and hear are the two figures stalking towards him. Then cold hands reach out and he frantically tries to back away because if those hands touch him, one pair metal-over-flesh and the other drenched to the wrists in Oliver’s own blood, he will finally come undone; but he has nowhere to go and nowhere to hide and the hands close on his arms and he can hear the whirring noise of the conversion unit and his own voice screaming and……_

He snaps awake, going from sleep to lucidity with a suddenness that is as shocking as it is a relief. He jolts upright, nearly falling off the chair as he does, panicked gaze flying around the large, bare ward.

No Daleks. No bodies. No Cybermen. No Oliver. No conversion unit. Just the patched-up support unit and Lisa within it, so still and quiet that his heart skips a beat until he realises that he can still hear the drone of the respirator. She’s alive; he sags back into the chair with relief. It’s only when his muscles protest that he grasps what must have happened – despite his intention to go and get dried off and changed last night before kipping on the camp bed next to the support unit, he fell asleep in soaking wet clothes, sitting on a metal chair, slumped against the unit. Small wonder that he aches from head to toe as though he’s been beaten.

He pushes himself slowly to his feet and forces his muscles to stretch, unable to completely swallow the gasp of pain. He looks at his wristwatch, feeling a flicker of surprise at the realisation that he got just over three hours sleep. Whether there were any other dreams, he can’t remember. His old nightmares have been almost entirely replaced these days, with the main feature of what little sleep he does get being Canary Wharf. Occasionally though, other.... things creep back in and his whole body twitches suddenly at the thought. He knows damn well why Oliver was there this time. After last night…. _No._ He won’t let himself think about that. Not now.

It’s not quite 5 am but there is no point in trying to sleep again. He can vaguely recall Keith storming off last night to the friend’s flat where he is staying – a friend who thankfully is out of the country at the moment - and Lisa is asleep and as peaceful as she ever gets, so he sets the sensor alarms and walks stiffly from the ward towards the bathroom. 

Thank God for institutional incompetence because it means that Dwr Cymru has never turned off the water supply to the hospital even though St Teilo’s has been abandoned since before Ianto was born. Once Ianto and Keith found the stop-cock, all it took to get potable water was opening the taps for hours until they ran clear. Good job the hospital wasn't on a meter; Dwr Cymru are still digging up local roads looking for the ‘leak’. The water is cold, of course – neither man trusts the decades-old gas-fired boiler enough to try and light it. Not that it matters; he barely notices. He is always cold these days, chilled to the bone. Warmth has become a memory, a privilege of another life.

He takes his wallet and the stopwatch from his pockets and puts them to the side and then quickly strips the damp clothes off, not wanting to be away from her for longer than he can help. As he starts the shower, the cold water stings his left temple where the Weevil caught him last night. He reaches up to touch it and finds little more than a scrape. Weevils being Weevils, though, he makes a mental note to slap some antiseptic cream on. 

As he lowers his left arm, the harsh overhead light catches the faint scars and long-healed burns scattered across it, overlapping the white line that runs from wrist half-way to elbow. For a moment he stands still under the freezing spray, staring. Oliver had asked about the scars. They were just months old, back then. When Lisa in her turn asked, soon after they started dating, he’d told her the truth about the scars and let her assume the same was true of the burns. She’d begged him to talk to her if he ever thought he was going down that road again. What he couldn’t tell her then was that the burns were Oliver’s handiwork, often with Ianto’s own lighter. What he can’t tell her now is how close he is to that road, because she will just blame herself and it isn’t her fault. It’s his.

He turns the shower off within minutes and steps out of the cubicle to grab the towels from the small suitcase sitting around the corner. There’s some hot water still left in the thermos standing on the sink which does for shaving, then he pulls a change of clothes from the case. As he slips one hand into the inner zip-up pocket for a pair of socks, he feels something else brush his fingers. His breath catches, disbelief warring with sudden hope as he turns his hand to take hold of the unexpected object. The day he abandoned the flat, he had hunted high and low for… he sits back on his haunches as he opens his fist and stares down at the necklace. Marco’s necklace.

* * *

  
They lay in the makeshift double bed, Marco on his stomach with his chin resting on his crossed arms and Ianto lying next to him on his side, head propped up on one hand. Up here in the cramped attic rooms given over to staff, the two tiny, high windows would have given little air even if they’d been open to the November rain and wind, and so there was no denying the heavy scent of sweat and sex. Probably a good job they were the only two who ever came into the room, considering that no-one else was supposed to know Marco spent most of his nights here. Marco’s room on the floor below might be bigger and his bed an actual double, but after the first night they’d decided the risk wasn’t worth taking. The owner’s grandson's vacant room could be overlooked; no-one would dig too deeply to find out whose room he was actually in, but if the upper management heard another man was sharing Marco’s room, Ianto would be out of a job faster than you could say ‘homophobia’.

The only sound aside from their gradually steadying breath was the faint noise of Marco flicking his lower lip with his teeth. 

“Penny for them?” Ianto asked. 

“Que?”

“Sorry – English phrase.” Ianto smiled at him. “I meant – what are you thinking about?” He was still revelling in this…normalcy. Being able to ask a question or make a comment without having to be afraid of the consequences. Not having to watch the other’s every move and try to predict every response to his own actions. There was no need to with Marco. But he still froze when Marco raised his voice and he still flinched at an unexpected touch. 

Marco looked away for a moment, then turned his gaze back and suddenly Ianto had an idea what was coming before his… _boyfriend? lover?_ even spoke.

“My father. He sent me an e-mail this morning. I have to go home.”

Ianto rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. They’d both known it would happen, of course. Known this wasn’t going to last. They’d known from the night of their joint 21st, when they fell into Marco’s bed too drunk to walk in a straight line but sober enough to get it up, that it was just a fling. For Marco, he knew, it was something of an experiment, a bit of fun away from the eyes of the old women and priests and free from his father’s demands. For Ianto – it had been a revelation. Teaching him that it could be good, it could be fun. 

He sighed and looked back at Marco, forcing his voice to calmness.

“Why now? I thought he wanted you to stay over here through the winter season as well?” _We’ve only had three months…._ He tried to push the disappointment away. _No regrets._

“Yes, I was to…learn the ropes, that is the phrase?” At Ianto’s nod, he continued. “But now, things have changed. My grandfather has died.”

“Oh.” Ianto hesitated, wondering whether to offer condolences; whenever Marco had spoken about his grandfather before it had only been to mention that when the old man died, his father would gain full control of the hotel chain. Clearly, even if there was no rancour, there was no strong family affection. When Marco spoke again, the causal tone gave no hint of any grief.

“It was his heart. He died last night. Now I am to go home and prepare to marry. It is all arranged. I told you, yes?” 

Ianto nodded. They’d been honest with each other from the first morning when they woke to find themselves tangled together in the sheets. Marco had to return to Spain to marry and keep the family tradition going but for now he wanted experiences that would be difficult or impossible to have once he was home. For his part, Ianto had neither asked for or offered love but simply enjoyed the novelty of not being hurt.

“Is she pretty?”

For a moment, he tensed, cursing himself for letting the question slip out. What if Marco got angry? He hadn't got angry yet but... Then he felt himself relax as surprise flickered over Marco’s face.

“ **You** like girls as well? All the waitresses, they say to each other you’re gay.”

He shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t flirt with them like you do. Doesn’t mean I don’t like girls. So – is she?”

“Ah, she’s beautiful! Long hair, eyes to drown in and a figure…..” Marco moved both hands through the air in a manner that left no doubt as to what the girl’s figure was like, then suddenly shifted onto his side, facing away from Ianto to rummage in the trousers abandoned on the bedroom floor. He pulled out his wallet and drew out a photo. 

“Here!” He rolled back, holding it out. “That is Maria. Pretty, no?”

Ianto took the photo and looked. The girl in the picture was barely more than sixteen, but…

“No.” He shook his head solemnly as he handed the photo back and waited until Marco’s jaw dropped with shock. “Not pretty – gorgeous!” 

“Ah – you and your wicked tongue!” Marco scowled and then grinned. That sounded like an opening line if ever there was one and Ianto was just leaning back in when Marco lifted his other hand into view. He held out a small plastic bag with the 'H Samuels' logo on it. He looked slightly embarrassed but also vaguely hopeful as he held it out.

“Here. I bought this today while you were serving lunch. If you were a woman, I’d give you something pretty to say goodbye, but….” He shrugged. “You are a man and men don’t like to be called pretty. So. This is not pretty, but - I like it. I like you.” He looked up into Ianto’s face. “Something to remember me by?”

Puzzled, Ianto sat up and took the bag. Inside was a small bundle of white tissue-paper. He lifted it out, feeling the weight of it and unravelled the paper until something fell into his hand. For a moment, he sat still and looked at the necklace. The twisted metal chain gleamed softly, almost hidden under the short cylinders that encased it's length. Marco was right – it wasn’t pretty, certainly wasn’t something any man would buy for a girlfriend. But... He looked up into Marco’s half-hopeful, half-cautious expression and smiled. 

“Hey – thanks. I…I don’t have…. I don’t have anything to give you to remember me…”

“Oh, really?” Marco’s now empty hands snaked out and wrapped themselves round the back of Ianto’s neck, pulling him back in. “I would not say that….”

At 21, recovery time is really not an issue. And this was goodbye.

* * *

They’d fallen asleep afterwards, woken later for more sex and then slept again, tangled together, til morning. Marco had left that day and a week later Andy rang with one of his warnings and Ianto ran again. But he kept the necklace, wearing it constantly until his transfer within Torchwood made a suit essential for work and wearing the necklace became impossible. Even then he kept it safe and wore it outside work. Not to remind him of some great love – love hadn’t been part of it. Marco hadn’t even known his real name; he’d been Ifan at the hotel. But because, like the stopwatch, it reminded him of some good times. And, like the battered old medallion of St Jude, it was a solid reminder that sometimes people actually cared. Marco had never hurt him, and had never been anything but considerate about his hang-ups.

He puts it on, because right now he could do with as many good memories as he can find. Lisa has seen it before – had even asked where it was from. A previous lover, he’d said. Truth enough, if not the full truth and his choice of words made her laugh. ‘Old-fashioned’, she’d called him. She’s never questioned his wearing it, though. Never asked him not to wear it. Another reason why he loves her.

The denim jacket is too wet for comfort so he shrugs into the canvas one, transferring the stopwatch as he does. The coat hangs awkwardly, pulling to the left and he shoves one hand into his pocket and pulls out two large bars of dark chocolate. _What the hell…oh!_ They’re from last week, he recalls. Some people down the bay, handing out free samples of some new dark chocolate. He doesn’t like the stuff but Keith does so he accepted a few bars. Given how dead their friendship is, he’s not sure why. He’s not even given them to Keith.

After re-filling the thermos with cold water for boiling, he heads back into the ward to check on Lisa. He wonders, as he crosses the room, when the sight of the support unit stopped making him feel sick and became…..normal. It’s probably not a good thing but just now he doesn’t care. It’s keeping her alive. That is all that matters. 

She’s still asleep, so he moves to the table set up to one side of the ward where they’ve put some basic essentials for themselves. Lisa neither eats nor drinks now (one reason for the massive energy needs of the support unit) but she worries if the other two don’t eat. The small microwave heats up the ready meals Keith eats every day and the kettle and dried milk do for his tea, but for Ianto the important item is the coffee machine. That and the laptop were the only things that wouldn’t fit into the single suitcase he brought from the London flat, ignoring Keith’s incredulous looks. He’s virtually living off coffee again these days but without the fags this time. Though there are moments when he’d kill for one despite it being well over a year since he's last smoked, there’s not enough money for him to be burning it. For the same reason he’s tried to cut back on the coffee, a difficult habit to break, but an expensive one with him currently at more than 12 mugs of strong coffee a day (actual beans, not that instant flavoured water). He spends far more on coffee than food, nowadays.  
  
The harsh noise as the first pot of the day starts wouldn’t disturb Lisa even if she wasn’t drugged – she’d become used to hearing it at all hours since he'd moved in. When the nightmares woke him and left him unable to go back to sleep, he’d make coffee and turn on all the lights in the main room and sit and read for an hour or two until he’d calmed down enough to try and sleep again. He had finally been getting better, the nightmares less frequent, in the last few months before Canary Wharf. Lisa had even commented that she could get used to not being woken in the middle of the night by him shouting and lashing out; that she was enjoying starting to find him still in bed with her if she woke before the alarm. 

_She’ll have that again,_ he tells himself firmly. When they cure her, when she is back to normal and they find somewhere safe to live, away from Cardiff and Torchwood, when they have each other - the nightmares will stop again.

He gathers everything he’ll need for the day: the other two thermos flasks, the two PDA-sized devices – the Rift Activity Locator and Meson Energy Scanner (both prototypes that Hartman demanded London receive a copy of, though if these are only the prototypes, he’d love to get a closer look at what Ms Sato has developed them into) - and the comm. intercept and puts it all in a backpack small enough to fit into one side of the bike’s box. The other bag is stored behind a loose pipe near the outer door. It contains bits and pieces of Torchwood London tech, his Colt and spare ammunition, and the stun-gun - none of which he wants Keith knowing he has.

 _Food._ He isn’t hungry – he hardly ever is, now, and when he is the urge often goes before he’s had time to do something about it, much as it did last night. But she’ll be awake soon and she seems to like talking to him as he eats whatever breakfast he can choke down. He doesn’t know how much she acknowledges that it’s nothing but a parody of the past. She could never face food before 8 so their days off were the only times they actually ate breakfast together – either his fry-ups or the American-style pancakes and waffles that she fell in love with on a year-long exchange at university. On workdays, she’d drink a cup of tea and he’d have coffee and some breakfast and then she’d take some of her oat-and-fruit muffins with them to eat on the hour-long Tube journey. And now he sits at her side and drinks coffee and forces food down his throat and smiles at her as he tries to pretend it’s the flat and it’s normal.

Bowl. Water. Instant oats. Stir. Microwave. It tastes like crap, even worse than when he makes it with milk, but everything tastes like ashes these days and milk costs money while water is free. Cost is now the over-riding factor for everything. Neither Lisa nor he has been paid since two weeks before the Battle, and they paid the month’s rent and most of their bills out of that. Keith’s “family emergency sabbatical” is unpaid. The drugs she needs he can only get on the black market by buying other people's prescriptions, and the running repairs to the cobbled-together life-support system have required all sorts of purchases, some having had to be made via Internet access at cybercafés with the added expense of hiring a Post Office Box for delivery. They maxed out the last credit card five days ago and with no income there’s no hope of loans or overdraft extensions. 

As of this morning, they have precisely £213.35 left in overdrafts between them all – about enough to get them through to the middle of next week, with the drugs they’ve still got. After that… Steal? His skills in that line aren’t exactly lousy, but they need more money then half-a-dozen CDs from HMV or the odd wallet will fetch. Beg? Borrow? Who the hell from? Neither Andy nor Mary could afford the kind of help he needs, even if they knew he was back. Gethin might be able to help, but he doesn’t know Ianto is back either and anyway, he doesn’t deserve lies but Ianto can hardly tell him the truth. Lying to The Bitch wouldn’t bother him, but as the song went – she wouldn’t piss on him if he was on fire. A loan from her is about as likely as the Second Coming. Earn? When? Lisa isn’t safe here, one of them always has to be with her and he spends the rest of his time stalking Harkness and doing what cybernetics research he dares to do via the cybercafés, always aware that Torchwood might be watching, that any one of his searches might raise a flag on monitoring software. 

No. There is only one way he can think to get the kind of money they will need if he can’t get into the Hub soon. He knows Frank Robb is still around, and the old bastard would be delighted to have Ianto in his debt. 

The very idea is enough to make his skin crawl. The repayments that would be demanded….to stop his thoughts going down **that** path, he pours himself the first mug of coffee for the day. Balancing mug and bowl, he moves back to the metal chair and sits down. Moments later, her eyes flicker and open. He can’t help but glance at his watch and he notes that it’s 5.15 - the sixth day running she’s woken up at exactly this time. No variation, even by a second. It scares him.

For a few seconds she stares at the ceiling and there is nothing in her face. No feeling, no life even. Briefly, he wonders…. Then her gaze shifts to him and she smiles. It lights up the room, her smile. It warms him. Makes him feel so **alive**. Even now, even after everything, she still looks at him like that. This wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, warm, funny, amazing woman looks at **him** like that. With so much love in her eyes that for a moment, he can’t speak. She could have had anyone. He knows for a fact that there were three men and (unbeknown to Lisa) one woman in the 500-strong Research Department who were angling to ask her out – and she asked **him** on a date. He won’t let her down. He **can’t**.

“Bore da, cariad,” she says, the phrase flowing as smoothly as if she’s been saying it all her life, the words and the smile chasing away his momentary doubt. Of course she is still his Lisa; of course she is still real and alive under the encasing metal. 

“Sabalheri, kipenzi.” When Hartman sent a generic e-mail throughout the Tower stating that although ‘office relationships’ weren’t a disciplinary matter, all staff were ‘expected to remain strictly professional in their manner to all colleagues throughout the working day’, Ianto promptly took advantage of being the only fluent Welsh-speaker in Torchwood to teach Lisa some native words – a few of which would decidedly not have been worksafe even without Hartman’s doctrine. Two days later, after a conversation with her maternal grandmother, Lisa had started teaching him the same sorts of phrases in Swahili. It became a joke between them, him using Swahili and her Welsh to do what Lisa called ‘sweet-talk’ each other. After that, she’d bought some Swahili language courses on CD and once joked that their kids would be the only ones in London who could switch from Welsh to Swahili with a bit of English thrown in. The assumption of their future had both exhilarated and terrified him. 

“How are you this morning, then?” 

“Alive,” she answers. “With you. So – not so bad really.” Then the smile fades. “What were you and Keith arguing about last night?” He shakes his head.

“Nothing much. He’s just a bit stressed. Don’t worry about it.” Of the many things that Lisa doesn’t need to know, the fact that her brother is days away from turning on them both is at the top of the list. She looks into Ianto’s face for a long moment before seemingly deciding to take his words at face value.

“Are you sure this is going to work, love? I mean, Captain Harkness…no-one knows very much about him. And I heard the way Hartman spoke about him once…..”

“Sweetheart, Hartman not liking him is not a point against him! And it’ll work – it has to. He knows I exist now – so all I have to do is persuade him that they need me.”

“But – what as?” Her words are coming faster now, always a sign she’s anxious. “I mean, you said as well as all being field agents, they were specialists, and love, I mean – you never…you’re not a specialist, Ianto, and you were only in the field for what – six weeks? And …” He cuts in – it’s been two years since Becca and the others died, but it still hurts. He still wonders if he could have saved them. Them and all of the people who died at his side in the Tower eight weeks ago.

“Doesn’t matter,” he says firmly. Of course, as far as Lisa is concerned, the plan is to get hold of Harkness and persuade the man to hire him for his Torchwood-related skills. He hasn’t told her about the files that show that every time Hartman tried to suggest that Cardiff could do with some ‘help’ from London, the Captain refused point-blank. She doesn’t know that the two times Hartman ignored those refusals and sent personnel over, Harkness took it upon himself to run his uninvited guests (both men) ragged by dragging them to every Rift incident going while ‘harassing’ (according to the files) them both to the extent that one of the men punched him and the other threatened to shoot him. Harkness clearly wants no interference from anyone from London. No, Ianto has no intention of trying to get Harkness to take him on for his Torchwood credentials alone. But she’s partly right - he still needs some sort of work to do once he’s got the man hooked. 

“Field agent, researcher, archivist, driver….don’t care what the job is, Lisa-bach, so long as he says yes. I’ll even man that fucking Tourist Office!” And it’s a sign of how stressed he is that he’s swearing, because he doesn’t swear aloud anymore although he used be as foul-mouthed as any Cardiff teenager. One of the many things he carries with him from Oliver. He twitches again as he thinks of that, but she puts her hand on his and he listens to her to distract himself. 

“Ianto Jones offering to go back into the tourist trade – it must be love!”

“Hey!” He manages a smile, trying to go along with her teasing so they can both forget reality just for a second. “You don’t know the true horrors of tourism. Have you heard some of the idiotic questions?” He gives an exaggerated shudder and she smiles broadly for once as she answers.

“What was that one you told me about the day you transferred?”

“Was that the one about the bloke who wanted me to ring ahead to Tower Bridge and get them to open it for a good photo as we went past? Or the one about the woman who wanted to know how tourists went about getting their photo taken with the Queen?”

Lisa laughs, or tries to. He flinches at the harsh, discordant noise she makes. She looks up at him and he can see the fear in her eyes.

“Ianto…” she starts. He leaves the bowl balanced on the edge of the unit and takes her hand, squeezing gently.

“We’ll do it, Lisa-bach. We will. It’ll be all right – I promise.” He doesn’t know if he believes it himself anymore, but he can’t bear to think of the alternatives so he keeps telling her the same things over and over again. 

“Hey…” She reaches up with difficulty and her heavy hand brushes the necklace briefly before she lets it drop. “You found it. Thought that was back at the flat.”

“So did I – must have taken it off the morning after we got back from Brittany and just popped it into the bag for safety.” That was two days before the Battle, just a little over two months ago now. _A lifetime ago_. 

“Ah. Glad you’ve got it – I know it means something to you.” There is a pause and then: “Was she special - the girl who gave you that?”

He manages a smile, knowing she is clinging to this topic of conversation to try and act as though things are sane – normal. But of course, she’s touched on one of the things he’s never told her. Has never had the courage to tell her. _Coward._

“No girl I’ve ever known is as special as you.” It’s true, but she groans and tells him he’s being corny. It helps though and she relaxes a little and there is, for a brief moment, something approaching peace in her face. She starts to talk now about friends from outside Torchwood while he eats, forcing himself to swallow even as his throat tries to close and his jaw tries to lock. He learned to over-ride such unforgivable reactions a long time ago. But that thought is traitorous – he’s too on edge as it is these days and last night, between Harkness and the nightmare, means that memories far less pleasant than Marco are too close and suddenly he chokes, coughing and retching. For a moment, his stomach nearly betrays him. By the time he has himself under control again, throat stinging, Lisa is staring at him with concern all over her face.

“Are you all right?”

He manages to force a smile, but he puts the half-full bowl onto the floor and holds his mug in both hands. He doesn’t realise how much he’s shaking until the coffee almost slops over the edge of the mug.

“I’m okay,” he manages. He takes a couple of deep, slow breaths, inhaling the rich odour and letting it calm him. “I’m okay. Just…” He meets her gaze. “Tired,” he hears himself admit and wants to kick himself when guilt flashes across her face.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I…I’m sorry, Ianto, I…” Her voice quavers and cracks and he leans forward quickly, bringing one hand up to brush the side of her face.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, do you hear? This is not your fault. And things will get better once we’re in the Hub.”

She draws as deep a breath as she can manage and he can see her struggle to calm down. She nods slowly.

“You’re going to try and talk to him again today?” Ianto knows exactly who she means – there is only one ‘him’ in their conversations these days.

He nods. “Soon as Keith gets here, I’ll head out. Want to be there as early as possible. It should be his turn to do the 10am coffee run today,” he explains, referring to the Captain, “but there’s always the chance something will bring him out earlier. I don’t want to miss any opportunities” 

As though he’s been summoned by his name, Keith arrives minutes later. He slams open the ward door and stamps across the floor, glaring at Ianto as he approaches. Lisa turns her head and smiles at him.

“Keith! How’re you?” 

In response, Keith scowls, shrugs and leans down to kiss her forehead. His eyes meet Ianto’s as he does and the sheer hate in them sends a chill down the Welshman’s spine. They are in danger, Lisa and he. He knows it as definitively as he knows that he will die for Lisa if he has to. 

As Keith straightens, Ianto leans forward and kisses Lisa himself. As always, he refuses to let himself think about how cold her lips are. Straightening up, he looks at Keith, raising an eyebrow.

“Keys?” 

Keith yanks the key-ring from his jacket pocket and hands it over, still glaring. Ianto pockets it and slings the backpack over one shoulder.  
  
“Back in a sec.” 

On his way out, he collects the second bag and takes both to the bike, which Keith has left in the half-derelict shed they use to hide both it and the van. Before he stores the second bag in the storage box, he transfers the stun-gun to his jacket pocket. He heads back into the ward, where Keith is sitting in the metal chair, running his gaze over the unit’s readouts.   
  
“Keith, can I have a word? Love, I’ll be back as soon as I can.” 

Still scowling, Keith stalks back across the floor and follows Ianto out of the door.

The moment the door has shut behind them, Ianto spins around. He grabs Keith by the shoulder and drives him sideways and backwards until the smaller man’s back slams into the wall. Stepping forward, he grabs Keith’s jaw and forces the man’s head up, elbow firmly against the other’s chest. Releasing Keith’s shoulder, he pulls the stun-gun from his pocket, lifting it into the shaken man's field of vision and pulling the trigger. A spark leaps between the two prongs and Keith’s shocked eyes widen. Ianto keeps his voice soft – Lisa’s hearing is phenomenal these days and he doesn’t want her to know what is happening.

“I’m going back to the Plass. If you hurt her, if you endanger her, you’d better get a good head start on running away. Because I **will** come after you and I **will** find you. And make no mistake, Keith – you won’t survive it when I do.” He shifts his grip, moving his right hand from Keith’s jaw to his Adam’s apple, and squeezes. Only slightly, but the fear in Keith’s eyes turns into panic for a second before Ianto relaxes his grip just enough for the other man to speak.

“What the fuck are you on, Jones? What the hell are you talking about? I’m her fucking brother for God’s sake – what do you take me for?” But his tone isn’t right for the indignation the words should carry – he’s blustering.

 _I take you for a fucking coward and a traitor, Keith._ When he speaks, Ianto lowers his voice even further so Keith has to strain to hear. A shout might make people jump, but in Ianto’s experience a whisper is actually more frightening.

“I **take** you for the man who’s going to listen to me very carefully and do **exactly** as I say until your sister is safely in the Hub. **Then** I take you for the man who’s going to walk away and keep his mouth **shut**.” _Which won’t be a problem because you’ll be retconned._ “Because you see, Keith…” He steps even closer to the smaller man, standing body-to-body against him, speaking right into his ear. “What you need to remember is that Lisa’s life is the only one that’s actually worth a damn to me. No-one else matters, you follow me? **No-one**.”

He pulls back now so that Keith can see him and lets his mind go….empty, is the only way he can think to describe it. Blank. He has no idea what it does to his facial expression but Becca, with five years experience in the field, said it freaked her out. From the way Keith’s throat convulses under Ianto’s hand as he swallows suddenly and the way his gaze snaps away from Ianto’s face, he’s not finding it very reassuring either.

Ianto says nothing after that, just lets go and walks away.

“What if she has an attack whilst you’re out?” Keith calls after him, his tone sullen now. “You gonna blame me anyway? What am I supposed to do then?”

Ianto doesn’t stop moving but he half-turns briefly, almost side-stepping, so he can look straight at Keith. “Pray she survives.”

He gets as far as the bike before he throws up, his stomach emptying itself of what little he managed to eat earlier. _God, what am I turning into?_ Keith was a friend, once. They’ve gone out on the lash together; got bawled out by Lisa for being hungover together; watched rugby together – on the same side when it’s the Lions and jovially scorning each other when it’s the Six Nations or any of the Southern teams on tour. And now he mistrusts the man’s every move and has just threatened to kill him.

But he has to keep Lisa safe. He **has** to. And he can’t risk Keith deciding to euthanize his sister. Whatever it takes to keep her safe he will do - whether that means keeping Keith in line by force or, with Harkness, playing the wh… playing on the man’s foibles. He **will** keep Lisa safe.

Taking a deep breath, he forces himself to calmness, pushing the memory of what he has just done away. Locking it away along with everything else he doesn’t have time to think about now. They told him he had no psychic or empathic skills during training, but the defence techniques they taught everyone do seem to help in shutting away those memories that he doesn’t want, doesn’t need. Of course the memories come screaming right back out at night but for now he just shoves them away, slams the door and ignores the faint whispers at the back of his mind.

He puts the stun-gun back into his right-hand pocket and pulls the black helmet on before swinging onto the bike. It doesn’t take him long to get into Cardiff proper – there’s not that much traffic at this time in the morning. When he gets to the Bay, he leaves the bike stashed by one of the language schools at the cost of yet another precious three quid (a parking fine he’d just ignore, but they clamp anything without a proper ticket) and walks the last few hundred yards to the Plass, the bag with the flasks over one shoulder. What’s in the lock-box is safe – he took the liberty of acquiring some Torchwood-style locks when he hunted through the Tower’s ruins. Bike and box are theft-proof short of a sonic device. 

It’s not quite 6.30 yet and nowhere is open – the area is silent but for the seagulls. At this time of day, the Torchwood team are almost equally likely to use either entrance, so he positions himself such that he can see both the water-tower and the top of the steps leading down towards the office and turns on the comm. intercept. There is nothing but a low crackle of static. He’s not yet even sure if he’s managed to correctly hack into their communication system: London was supposed to have over-ride codes for the comm. systems for all other branches, but he quickly learned on arrival in Cardiff that the team here had changed their systems. So far he’s managed to hack into First Great Western’s train-to-train communications, Cardiff Ambulance Service, Dragon Taxis and what sounded like a pizza delivery service. Late yesterday evening, just after Harper and the two women went home, he picked up another channel. There’s been only silence so far but if he’s lucky, it’s the Torchwood channel and they’ve just been quiet since last night.

An hour later, there has been nothing over the possible comm. channel and no sign of Harkness. He’s so tired his muscles keep jerking in brief, harsh spasms, and as he rubs his thumb and forefinger across his eyes and the bridge of his nose he wonders whether to have some of the coffee in the flask he made for himself. On the one hand, he has no idea how long he’s going to be here and he can’t afford to buy any if he runs out. On the other hand, if he doesn’t, he’s going to fall asleep standing up.

Exhaustion wins out and he pours some coffee carefully into the flask cup, drinking it slowly. As he finishes, there is a brief flare in the crackle of static from the interceptor. He yanks it out and listens, and to his delight, he can hear a phone ringing. _Please let this be the one!_ After three rings, a woman’s voice answers and he thinks it’s Costello but he’s not sure. She sounds snappish.

-"What is it?"- 

There is a brief second of silence in which his nerves stretch almost to breaking point and then relief floods through him as he hears Harkness’s voice, the other man sounding far too bright and breezy for Ianto’s taste right now. The Captain sounds as fresh as if he’s had a 12-hour rest, though he can’t have had much more sleep than Ianto did.

-"And a good morning to you, too, Suzie! Listen, the system’s put up a red flag: Barry Police had a call five minutes ago from a man who swears he just saw a baby mammoth wandering across a school playing field. No Rift flare, but there was that one the day before yesterday that we assumed was a blank, so I’m out to see to it. Need you to cover the Hub.”-

Still listening, Ianto kneels down next to the backpack and yanks out the second flask and the mug. Costello groans.

-"Damn it, Jack; it’s Owen’s turn to come in early."-

-"It is? Sorry Suzie, guess I got mixed up. Did I…interrupt anything?"- 

The level of innuendo in his voice makes Ianto raise an eyebrow. Hard to imagine Hartman saying anything like that. Hard to imagine Hartman saying “sorry”, truth be told. Costello snorts.

-"I should be so lucky!"-

-"Hey now, Suzie, if that’s the way it’s going these days you know you only need to ask….."- 

Unscrewing the flask and pouring the mug half-full, Ianto shakes his head, torn between admiration and disbelief. The more he sees of Harkness, the clearer it is that those anecdotes in the London files didn’t even come close to painting an accurate picture of the extent of the man’s flirting. Which will hopefully make his own job easier. Costello chuckles but there is something in her voice, an undertone…. not for the first time, Ianto shivers slightly. Costello makes his skin crawl. There is something…off about her. He’s unsure what it is, but there is **something**

-"Jack, you’re too much of a bastard to be my type and I’m certainly not yours!"- 

-"I have a **type** >?"- The Captain sounds honestly surprised, and it doesn’t escape Ianto’s notice that the man has ignored the first part of Costello’s comment.

-"Young and pretty, as a general rule."-

-"Suzie, you are a handsome woman and you age like a fine wine."- Ianto rolls his eyes as he shoves the bag behind a bollard and heads down towards the Tourist Office. Costello answers dryly, her words echoing Ianto’s thoughts.

-"If that’s supposed to be a compliment, Jack, you need practise."-

-"You wound me, Suzie, you wound me."-

-"Bah! Like I said – too much of a bastard. Get off to Barry and the mammoth sighting. I’ll be at the Hub in fifteen."-

-"Make it ten."-

Harkness rings off and Ianto just has time to turn the interceptor to silent alert and drop it into his jacket pocket before the door opens and Harkness comes striding out.

“Morning!” Ianto calls. “Coffee?” He sees the slight hitch in Harkness’s stride as the older man notes his presence, but he holds out the mug as though it’s perfectly reasonable for him to be standing out on the Bay at barely seven-thirty in the morning, offering coffee to a man he’s supposed to have only known for about six hours. For Harkness, the only unusual thing about the scenario is probably the setting.

Last night was too dark for Ianto to really get a good look at the other man, but now in the daylight it’s easy to understand some of the comments he'd read in the London files. He’s not done anything more than admire anyone other than Lisa in two years, but Harkness has looks enough to draw everyone's eye. 

Harkness stops in front of him and takes the mug, looking somewhat baffled. He lifts it and sniffs the contents and there’s a flicker of surprise on his face. He takes a swallow and Ianto watches, face neutral. He’s followed Harkness on several coffee runs over the last few weeks and knows the general tastes of each member of the team. From the look on Harkness’s face, that little bit of incidental research has just paid off. 

“Wow!” But then the mug is shoved back into Ianto’s hands and that wasn’t how he’d hoped this would go. Alarmed, he hears his own voice before he can stop it.

“I want to work for you.” _**Think** , man! Think first, **then** talk!_ But Harkness is already answering and his tone is dismissive.

“Sorry, no vacancies.” 

“Look, let me tell you about myself.” He means to play off what he’s learned from reading the files and watching the team. Means to continue playing the cards that Harkness’s habit of flirting and their shared sexuality give him. Means to use those memories he hates in order to further the plan. But before he can say anything more Harkness speaks again, reeling off what he’s learned since last night.

“Ianto Jones, born August 19th, 1983.” He starts to walk again and Ianto turns to keep pace, listening silently. _Does that mean he didn’t read the full file?_ “Able student but not exceptional, one minor conviction for shoplifting in your teens.” That makes his hackles rise. Getting caught was a stupid mistake and sent things from bad to worse, but in any other job it would have been regarded as spent long ago. _Bloody Torchwood._ “Number of temporary jobs, mainly a drifter…” He wants to laugh at that, because that’s not what he would have called it. Drifting implies choice – and where was choice in those years? “Until two years ago you join the Torchwood Institute in London. Junior researcher. Girlfriend, Lisa Hallett.”

“Deceased.” The word is out immediately: it’s always been the plan to prevent Harkness from even thinking about Lisa. Officially she’s on the ‘missing’ list, but of course if that were true there would be no hope after this long so he has to pretend he’s ‘accepted the inevitable’. 

“I'm sorry,” Harkness says, but it has the same air that Ianto has already heard dozens of times – a meaningless phrase, trotted out for social niceities.

“Look,” Ianto moves in front of the older man, putting out a hand to bring him to a verbal and physical halt, deliberately standing with his body open to his target. He can feel the cesspit of memories trying to open up under his feet, courtesy of his own actions and the nightmare, but he has to focus on the job he has set himself, even though Harknesss’s reference to the years before Torchwood is making that hard. 

“You checked me out…” The words are deliberately ambigious, a purposeful hint of innuendo, but before he can lead Harkness any further, the Captain verbally steamrolls forward.

“You knew what a Weevil was.” There is something causal in his tone, as though he sees checking out random strangers who stumble on Torchwood affairs as a mundane thing. But then, perhaps it is to him. London, of course, had whole teams dedicated to ‘clean-up’ as Becca called it. The thought of Becca makes him realise Harkness hasn’t mentioned her, or the others. So perhaps he **has** only read the general file. “Thought I was gonna have to come…deal with you.” There is just the tinest hesitation before the word ‘deal’, enough to make Ianto hope his ploy is getting somewhere despite the fact that Harkness hasn’t taken advantage of Ianto’s outflung line. So: 

“But instead you could see I have the right qualifications for the job.” As he hasn’t named a job, he has to hope Harkness either challenges him on that or looks no further than Ianto’s appearance and flirting. Not that the job itself matters - it’s the Hub he’s after. But he needs to get Harkness interested ( _hooked and wanting more_ ), needs him to think that Ianto is…willing. Partly in order to deflect any qualms the older man might have about his London history and partly because he will need to be in the Hub virtually around the clock and he cannot risk Harkness ever wondering why. So long as he gets in, he’ll do any job Harkness throws at him - and accept any use the Captain has for him. 

**_Whore._** He barely manages to hide the flinch at that internal whisper but Harkness speaks again, yanking his mind back to here-and-now just as he did last night. Any spark of gratitude for that, however, is dowsed by Harkness’s actual words.

“There is no job. We're nothing to do with Torchwood London. I severed all links.” Harkness brushes past Ianto, dismissing him as though he is unworthy of notice.

He should be scared, or alarmed, because the plan has unexpectedly run into a brick wall of disinterest, but instead Ianto is suddenly furious. Because he knows the truth of that – Cardiff offered no help before or after the Battle and has ignored the battered survivors, leaving them to the tender mercies of Retcon and nightmares and whatever-the-hell it is that has happened to his ‘disappeared’ colleagues. All Cardiff did was to come down like a flock of vultures; Costello and Sato ignoring everything that was going on around them, focusing solely on their own needs and wants. Achieving their aims by literally stepping over the bodies of the dead, both fully human and partly-converted. Oh, Lisa wasn’t the only one, just the only one he'd had the time to get to safety. There were at least a dozen others, each and every one shot dead by nameless, faceless figures in black, and he has no idea who was behind it – the Institute? UNIT? Glasgow, Cardiff, the Crown? Was it Harkness who ordered those deaths, while grinning like a shark? The unknown Suits with their badges and their disdain? The Queen, ignoring the fact that they’d all sworn to serve ‘Queen and Country’? There’s an oath they’ll never get from him again. Nothing else has any meaning now; all there is in the world is protecting Lisa. The rush of anger fuels him and his words come out almost as a snarl.  
  
“Yet when it burned,” and he’s in front of Harkness now, seething, and this time he moves closer to the other man and shoves a hand into his chest. In that first split second, it feels like he’s been scalded and it takes all his self-control not to yank his hand away “two members of your team scavenged the ruins.” His hand is hard against the other’s chest and he can **feel** the heat surging from Captain Harkness. The sheer, living warmth of the man seems to sink into Ianto’s flesh as waves of heat coil up his arm, racing through him. For the first time in weeks, the bone-deep cold dissapates. Suddenly, it feels so damn long since he touched something warm, something alive. The only human touch he has had in eight weeks is Lisa, and Lisa is so very cold now and Harkness is **there** , under his hand, vibrant and fiery and alive. He doesn’t want this contact to end and now he can smell wool, leather, cinnamon of all things and something else; something that makes the heat slide down his spine and shoot up his legs, and the two blazing trails meet and for just a second, he wants more than just this one hand on Harkness’s clothed chest, he wants… _Stop!_ he snaps at himself. _Focus. **Lisa.**_

And then fingers reach up and Harkness literally lifts Ianto’s hand away between finger and thumb, like a man might touch a dead rat or something rotten, pushing it back, releasing his grip as soon as possible. The exhiliration and heat of touch is gone and the anger is back even as Harkness speaks, his voice contemptous.

“Don't want the equipment getting into the wrong hands.”

“And you're the right hands, are you?” Before he can even tell himself this is not the way to get a job, his mouth seems to realise it needs to change track. “Trial period, three months.”

“No.”

“Three weeks. Three days. Let me prove myself to you. I'll work for nothing.” Somewhere, at some point, he’s lost control of this conversation and now he is floundering.

“No.” Harkness starts to move again and Ianto moves as well, desperation robbing him of most of his remaining self-control.

“I saw what they did at Canary Wharf.” This time, he grabs Harkness by one shoulder and pulls him slightly backwards, forcing himself in front, well into Harkness’s personal space once more despite the man’s reaction to that the night before. Right now, he’s lost all ability to flirt or imply an offer. The memories are coming up like bile, bitter and foul and he’s not actually sure which ‘they’ he means - the Daleks, the Cybermen or his own people. “What am I supposed to do with those memories?” 

“You are not my responsibility. And we're not hiring.” Having utterly dismissed him, Harkness moves past and walks off once more. Ianto stands motionless, desperately trying to think of a way to rescue something from this mess.

“Same time tomorrow then.” He forces his voice back to the tone he’d started with, letting Harkness know he’s not going to give up. 

“There is no job for you here and there never will be,” Harkness calls back. 

“I really like that coat.” The daft thing is, it’s true. It suits him. Flamboyant, exuberant.

This time, Harkness doesn’t even seem to break stride. He walks away, disappearing from sight as he climbs the steps into the Plass. For a moment, Ianto stands frozen. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. With all the stories about Harkness, it didn’t occur to him the man would turn down what Ianto was offering him.

_#I always said you were a whore, didn’t I? Now you’re proving me right. Do anything for the right price, won’t you? Nothing but a pretty whore.#_

The cold voice sounds so real that he whips round, staring wildly about half-convinced he can smell Embassy cigarettes; almost expecting to see Oliver standing there with that look on his face that always promised pain. The old fear comes charging back and he starts to shake, his breath coming in harsh sobs. He raises both hands to his face, vaguely aware of the mug tumbling from his grip, and presses the heels of his palms against his closed eyes.

 _#Whore#_ the remembered voice hisses again.

 _So what if I am?_ The sudden thought is bitter, angry. _I learned how to be because of you. Because of what you made me do. And now I’ll do the same with Harkness. This time round, the price is keeping Lisa safe._

The laugh seems to echo in his mind, the harsh sound that used to freeze him in place. 

_#You think he won’t know you for what you are? Those men last night, while you waited for him? They knew what you were. Any man who’s ever looked at you knows, why do you think they keep wanting to know how much you cost? **Whore**. Putting yourself on show for Harkness. Offering yourself to him. You think he’ll treat you any better than I did? If you do, you’re a fool. He’ll treat you like the whore you are. Just like I did. Just like you deserve.#_

His legs give out and he falls to his knees as the memories start to surge up, shameful and loathsome. It’s what he hasn’t allowed himself to think about beyond the acknowledgement that he has to let Harkness think himself in control, that he has to play this to Harkness’s tastes, whatever they are. The idea that Harkness might share Oliver’s tastes, Oliver’s kinks - _Oh God._ That he might have to go back to that. He remembers the last time he was on the verge of having to go back to it....

* * *

Later, he would blame his lack of observation on the head-splitting migraine. He was normally very aware of everything around him, alert for any sign of danger, but that day he’d barely been at work an hour and the heat was already starting to build when some little shits in another open-top bus had snatched his hat from his head as the two vehicles eased past each other. 

Eight hours later, after a day spent bare-headed in the searing late-August heat dealing with the noise and chaos of central London traffic and idiotic tourist questions, he backed out of the Great August Birthday Piss-Up (so-called because 21 of the 30 tour guides and bus drivers hired that summer had birthdays in August) even though it had been planned since May. 

“Ach, c’mon man – you have to come, you’re only 22 once!” Fliss poked him in the ribs but when he lifted his head from his hands to look at her, her face flooded with shock. 

“Fuck, pet – you look about to puke!” 

He nodded tightly and bit back a moan of pain at the movement. 

“Go on, get home! See you tomorrow if you’re up to it,” she said, looking honestly worried. “No-one came in by car – you gonna be ok on the Tube?”

“Mmmm.” Not up to his usual standard, but about all he could say for fear of vomiting on her shoes.

By the time he reached the surface after the Tube journey, he was nearly in tears with the pain. Lights kept flaring in the corners of his vision and even the sound of his own breathing hurt. As migraines went, this one was pretty spectacular. As he neared the flat, able to think of nothing but painkillers and sleep in a dark room, his phone beeped from his hip pocket. He flinched in renewed pain and snatched at the phone, just wanting the noise to stop. It was only ingrained habit that made him lift the phone to eye-level to see the caller ID instead of simply declining the call.

When he forced his gaze to focus on the tiny screen and he saw the name there, his heart gave a huge leap in his chest and he would have sworn it stopped beating for a second. He brought the phone closer, hitting “answer”.

“Mary.”

“Laddie, you need to run.”

At the words, he stopped dead and stood in the middle of the pavement, swaying on his feet as despair surged through him. He’d known what she was going to say from the second he saw her name. Sunday night was the time Mary rang to chat and check up on him. Andy always sent him a text once a week, whenever his shifts allowed, and he’d call back to talk. They only contacted him at any other time for this – to warn him. 

He pressed the palm of his left hand to his forehead and forced the words out past the pain. 

“You’ve heard from Andy?”

“No, boy – I was in evening Mass. You’re in the Intercessions Book, you always are, and as soon as the reader said “we pray for our own intentions”, I knew I had to call you. Boy, I’ve left Mass to call you.”

Startled, he looked at his watch. She had as well: it was barely 8pm – even a weekday Mass wouldn’t be over yet. 

He stopped praying after Mam died. Then Oliver killed any last gasp of belief in a benevolent God. But even after three years, he still had no idea what to make of Mary’s conviction that it was the saints or his ‘guardian angel’ who told her when he was in danger. Part of him wanted to say she was crazy but it was impossible to deny that twice before she’d called to warn him, and both times she'd been right. She must be seriously worried this time – she regarded it as the next thing to blasphemy to leave Mass before the last note had faded. 

“Ianto? You hearing me, lad?”

“Yes.” He looked up the road. From here, he could see the front gate of the flat, but York had taught him not to hesitate when Mary called. His wallet was in his back pocket, containing his drivers licence and the battered old medallion she’d given him three years ago. The stopwatch was in his hip pocket – it hadn’t left his possession since Gethin brought it back to him in Cardiff Royal. The necklace he hadn’t taken off since he'd put it on two hours after Marco gave it to him. Nothing else was important enough to worry about – he still hadn’t had the insurance payout for the bike, written off by an idiot taxi driver. 

“Talk about minimalist living,” he muttered. 

“What? Where are you boy? You home?”

 _What home?_ “No. I’ll….” He sighed. _Sorry Fliss, guess you won’t be seeing me tomorrow._ “I’ll get out of London tonight. I’ll call you when I’m somewhere for the night.” When the insurance money finally came it would have to go on rent for yet another new place, rather than on the replacement bike he’d picked out as his birthday present to himself. Anger curled in his gut. 

“Stay safe, boy. Love you.”

He closed his eyes against the sudden prickle. “Love you, Mary. And – thank you. I owe you. Again.”

“Now, lad – you owe me nothing, you know that.”

She hung up and he turned to head back to the Tube station. Where to? Euston? Paddington? King’s Cross? Hard, through the pain in his head, to remember which stations led to which parts of the country. To remember where he’d been and where he’d already run from. He’d started to think he was safe. _Stupid. You’re not safe, you’re never going to **be** safe. Ever._ Hard, sometimes, to remember why running had seemed like a good idea in the first place.

His leaden steps took him past an alley-way that cut down the back of a row of long gardens. With the houses at the far end of the gardens on one side and the derelict factory on the other, it was an isolated spot, always littered with used needles and condoms, the sort of place he normally viewed with caution. He started to glance into the entryway when he heard a nearby surface train, horn blasting, and the renewed surge of pain nearly took him to his knees.

“Iesu **Grist**!”

“Now, now - you know I don’t like a foul mouth.”

He froze where he was, half-crouching, hands pressed to his head. _My imagination, my imagination, my imagination_ he chanted to himself frantically. He knew that voice. Night after night, it haunted his dreams though he hadn’t heard it in his waking life since York, as he threw himself onto a train even as the guard went to slam the door, that voice snarling from the platform. Nearly three years since that voice had been a part of his everyday life. _My imagination. **Please.**_

He straightened slowly, turning to face the mouth of the alley. To face Oliver. The other man stepped forward, coming just to the edge of the pavement. His red hair had a hint of grey in it these days, and he was smiling that polite, disarming smile that he always displayed to outsiders. At first glance, you’d think the smile touched his eyes. A handsome, charming man. Until you got to know him. 

“And you’ve cut your hair,” Oliver observed with a small shake of his head. “You know I don’t like it when you cut your hair.”

“Ol….Oliver.” He couldn’t move, could barely breathe and the name came out as a rasp. Oliver took another step forward and Ianto’s eyes were drawn to the heavy, inch-thick leather-and-chain leash dangling from Oliver’s hand. The dog-lead. _Oh God_ His skin seemed to crawl and he wrenched his eyes away, shooting a glance up and down the road. No sign of life, not even a car. A quiet area, at this time of day: Oliver had chosen well. In the alley, no-one would notice. No-one would hear. No-one would see whatever Oliver did to him.

“Seems to me you’ve been doing quite a few things I don’t like you doing,” Oliver said, his voice oh-so-reasonable, so matter-of-fact. “I thought we’d been over that before. But maybe you’ve forgotten what happens when you do that.” He paused for a beat. “Just going to have to remind you, aren’t I, before I take you home? Remind you what happens when you do things I don’t like. When you disobey me. And while I’m at it, I’ll remind you who you belong to.”

“I don’t belong to you.” The words were out, almost guttural, before Ianto could think to hold them back. The wrong thing to say and he knew it, but before he could get his feet to even try and move Oliver was on him, dragging him down into the alley and then slamming him backwards to hit the wall. One hand gripped Ianto’s face at the junction of jaw and throat, forcing his head up and back as a thigh shoved in between his legs, the pressure hard enough to cause pain. The other hand slammed into the wall next to his head, the lead dangling from his fingers. All Oliver’s good looks were gone and all that remained was the rage and the heat in his eyes that said he wanted to see pain. Ianto’s pain.

“Yes, you do.” Oliver hissed the words, his hard weight against Ianto, face just inches away. His breath stank of alcohol. “You’re **mine** , you little shit. I took you in, I put a roof over your head, I fed you, I put clothes on your back, I gave you a bed to sleep in and what did you do, you ungrateful little bastard? You ran away. You got me demoted with your lies, did you know that? Dropped me and half the squad in the shit. They didn’t prosecute because they knew you were lying but they said we’d brought the Force into disrepute. So they disbanded the squad. I got **demoted** and lost the fucking squad - after everything I’d worked for. All because of you. All those lies you told, all those things you said. **Three years** I’ve been trying to find you and every time I’ve been close, you’ve run again. How the hell has an idiot like you managed to stay ahead of **me** , eh? Who’s been helping you? Was it Davidson? I know the scrawny cunt helped you leave Cardiff. Tried to make him pay but his boss wouldn’t listen to me and that was because of you as well. You’ve just cost me my **job** , you little bastard, did you know that?” He bared his teeth, a vicious travesty of a smile. “I went to Nottingham. I found that boy at the art gallery.” 

Ianto fought for breath, trying to twist free of Oliver’s grip, but at those words he froze. _Oh God, no. Not Peter. Don’t let him have found Peter_. With the surge of concern for his last partner, he felt a shameful wave of fear for himself, for what Oliver would do to him for Peter. For Marco. 

“I was only trying to find out where you were, but the stupid little shit claimed he didn’t know. So I lost my job just for trying to get him to answer a few questions. Why wouldn’t he answer, hmmm? Were you letting him fuck you? Were you letting Davidson fuck you as well? You must have been - no other reason I can think of that they’d help someone like **you**. Using all your little tricks weren’t you, whore? Don’t try and deny it. I went to the hotel in Portsmouth – found out about that Spanish bastard. You let **him** fuck you, didn’t you? Whore. You always were a slut. Never satisfied, always wanting it, always asking for it, always wanting a cock in you, never caring whose it was. How many, **whore**? Twenty? Thirty? Can’t be less, you’re too much of the slut for that. How did they have you, whore? Against a wall? Over a desk? Did you put your arse in the air for them? How many of them have there been? How many men have you begged to fuck you, Ianto?”

He pushed closer to Ianto and suddenly it was obvious how much the situation was affecting him. Terrified, Ianto felt the old, familiar feeling of sick helplessness flood over him. But buried in there was something else. The subject matter was familiar – God help him if another man so much as met his eyes or if he smiled at one without permission, though how that squared with the ‘parties’ where he was handed to any man who asked or who called in a favour or a loan, he’d never dared question – but the irony of it all suddenly made him want to laugh. Here was Oliver, assuming he’d been fucking his way around the country whereas in truth, it had been almost a year before anyone could so much as touch him without him jumping out of his skin. He’d thought, hoped, that Susan was the rock he could cling to – but when he tried for honesty about who the ‘Oliver’ who haunted his dreams was, she’d left him the same night. “Disgusting” she’d called him, as she’d pulled her clothes on. “Pervert.” Nothing he hadn’t heard before but it still hurt. It was almost six months after that before he’d been able to even **think** about sleeping with another man again, when Marco arrived. It had then taken two more months and the excuse of getting blind drunk before he could ignore the fear enough to respond in kind when Marco made a move. Marco was everything Oliver wasn’t – and even then, he couldn’t bring himself to step over those mental lines. And Peter…. That had started with a drunken kiss on New Year's Eve and then Peter had dumped him after three months saying there was no point in having a boyfriend ‘too head-fucked to be fucked and too freaked-out to blow me’. Three partners in three years and the last man to fuck him had been Oliver himself. Hardly the whore. Not that Oliver would believe him, of course.

“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Oliver bellowed, and all urge to laugh fled as Ianto’s gaze automatically snapped up to met the cold green eyes. That phrase was a bad one. That phrase was always the last prelude to one of the beatings that left him unable to stand, never mind walk. The only worse words were….

“I’m going to give you a choice, Yan.”

Suddenly Oliver wasn’t just holding him pinned to the wall, he was holding him _up_ , because Ianto’s legs gave out at those words, at the nickname he only ever heard when Oliver was angry with him, and he shook so hard he could hear the faint sound of his jacket rasping against the brick wall behind him. Oliver forced his head to the left so he could see the lead dangling from blunt fingers.

“For every time you’ve let another man fuck you over the last three years – I’ll give you a choice. This…” He moved his right hand slightly, making the lead sway hypnotically. Then his left hand moved, coming forward along Ianto’s jaw, forcing his mouth partly open. At the same time, he shifted his grip on the dog-lead and pushed his thumb briefly into Ianto’s mouth. “…Or this.” He tasted of ashes and metal.

Ianto’s stomach roiled even at the thought and he tried to wrench his head away. Oliver’s grip shifted again, strong fingers closing over his Adam’s apple. Pain lanced through his neck as his breathing was cruelly restricted.

“Your choice, Yan. What’s it going to be?” Once he had realised how much Ianto hated going down on him, it had become a sick game for Oliver to play when he was in a particularly savage mood: make Ianto choose his own punishment. If he didn’t choose, he got both. And when he did choose, he had to tell Oliver why he had to be punished and ask for what he’d chosen. No, not ask - beg. Beg Oliver for a beating, or beg to be ‘allowed’ to go down on his knees. And if he didn’t beg well enough, he got both punishments and more besides.

In the long moment that stretched out after Oliver’s words, it felt as though Ianto could hear the roaring of his blood as his heart hammered against his chest. _Choose!_ , a terrified voice whispered in his head. He hadn’t heard that voice for years but it was back now. Back so quickly and what did that say about him, about how weak he was? _Choose, quickly! You know what’ll happen if you don’t…._

Then Oliver’s eyes narrowed and his left hand forced Ianto’s head further up and back and now his right hand reached down and Ianto realised with a sick rush of dread that Oliver had seen the necklace.

“What the hell’s this, you little slut?” He leaned slightly back, his fingers twisting into the necklace, pulling so that it dug into the back of Ianto’s neck. “This a pay-off from one of the cocks you’ve had? This one of your payments, **whore**? Who was it?” He paused for a second, almost as though he was honestly expecting an answer and then he twisted the chain even tighter, turning his hand so his knuckles pressed into Ianto’s throat. “Can’t remember, Yan? Too many of them, is that it? Too many men to remember any one of them, eh? Well, you’re not keeping **this** payment, whore. You’re not flaunting any of those men in front of me, you little bastard. You’re not taking **this** back home.” He started to pull down on the necklace, his left hand still holding Ianto’s head against the wall. The pressure of the chain against the back of Ianto’s neck became painful.

 _You deserve it._ The same old voice with the same old words. _You slept with Marco, you slept with Peter. You got Oliver into trouble. You deserve it. All the pain, all the punishments. You deserve it all._

All. Suddenly, it was as though he could feel every bruise, every cut, every burn, every bite; every broken bone and dislocated joint Oliver had ever inflicted on him. Every humiliation, every abuse. For one single second, the world was nothing but pain. But the necklace was warm against his neck, warm enough to remind him of Marco’s touches, Peter’s caresses; Susan’s embraces. Three lovers in three years and none of them, not one, seemed to think he deserved what Oliver had dealt him every day. And now Oliver was going to take the only thing he had of Marco, the single best thing of those three years. Take it and force him back into the old life.

The first time it went beyond a slap, Ianto had hit back. Oliver, nearly four inches taller and almost three stone heavier, had pinned him down on the sofa and then afterwards used the dog-lead to beat him black and blue. The second time Ianto had tried to hit back left him with one of the blank spots in his memory. He didn’t know what had happened, he only remembered waking up in pain. He’d never dared raise a hand to Oliver again. Until now.

The right hook carried years of pain and fear and rage and hate. Oliver went stumbling backward almost clear across the alley before he fell. Ianto didn’t stop to see what happened next – he ran.

Out of the alley and down the road that ran alongside the factory. From here it was just a few minutes to the Tube station where there was bound to be a cop who could help and dear **God** but wasn’t that ironic? Half of Oliver’s squad had known what was going on and the neighbours had called the police three times, but when the cops who showed up realised whose house it was…

Ahead, down the slight incline, he could see the surface line that lay between him and the Tube station. Flashing lights signalled the level-crossing barriers coming down and he could just see the slow-moving goods train edging towards the crossing that now blocked his route to the Tube. The level crossing was unmanned and there was no-one else in sight. On his right, across the road, the unbroken wall of the local secondary school blocked any escape attempt. Behind him, running footsteps sounded on the concrete pavement. 

Not daring to even glance over his shoulder Ianto headed left, plunging down the steep grassy slope that led to the Common. There was refuge on the other side of the Common, houses and shops and a 24-7 supermarket. The footsteps were still pounding behind him: Oliver had always been fast on his feet for such a bulky man. Ianto pushed himself to run faster, trying not to fall as the ground dropped away under his feet, fresh pain jolting through his head with every step. 

The sloping grass changed to level concrete as he found himself on a path, and then the trees closed in around him as the walkway led into a wooded area. From somewhere ahead, he heard rustling and movement, but it was the sounds behind that were of more concern. He could still hear footsteps, the leaves crunching under Oliver’s feet and he tried to run faster still even as he tore out of the copse. The path he was on ended here at a ‘T’ junction, intersecting with another trail and he wrenched himself round to the right, aware of the smooth expanse of grass spreading out from the other side of the new lane. Up ahead he could see a woman and two small children walking towards him, a dog trotting behind. The first people he’d seen and there was no way she could help him. 

Then the rustling from the trees he’d just come out of increased and something burst out of the thin woods and darted across the grass onto the path, right between him and the family.

It looked like something out of a horror film, all leathery skin and misshapen head and razor-sharp teeth as it stood there in between them and looked from Ianto to the woman and children. Ianto skidded to a stop and stared at the creature. _Can’t be real. Can’t be real, has to be….a joke….someone…dressing up?_ But the breeze brought the stench of the creature to him and it snarled, and even from here he could see the saliva dripping from its jaws. _Oh Jesus Lord, it’s fucking real._

Behind it, the woman screamed and the children shrieked and the creature turned and made straight for them as Ianto stood frozen to the spot. From beyond them, the dog, a full-grown Alsatian, leapt past the family right at the… thing, but the creature literally caught the dog in mid-air and threw it against the tree-line. It swung around to face the dog as the pet struggled back to its feet with a snarl almost as vicious as the creature’s own. 

Even as the dog leapt for the creature again, Ianto found himself moving. He ran straight past the creature towards the woman and children. She had them both by their arms and was dragging them back, away from the creature, eyes wide with horror. Ianto didn’t stop or waste breath on speech but simply swept one of the children up into his arms and ran on, off the path and across the grass towards the nearest tree away from the copse itself. As soon as he got there, he shoved the child up as high as he could reach, into the middle branches of the tree. The little girl, who couldn’t have been more than five years old, grabbed the branches around her and stared down at him in now-silent terror. 

“Climb!” he snapped at her and spun round to find her mother was two paces behind him, her son in her arms, her eyes terrified. He grabbed the boy from her and turned to push him up into the tree after his older sister. He turned again to face the woman. It was then he realised that she had a bright piece of cloth draped across her chest and tied around her. He could see a pair of tiny hands just poking their way out of the wrapping. _A baby._

Beyond her, he could see the… thing fighting the dog. In that moment, the creature lifted the dog up in both clawed hands and brought it down hard against a raised leg. The **crack!** echoed even to where they were standing and he heard the horrible, high-pitched yelp before the dog went limp. Staring, terrified, into his face, the woman flinched at the sound. 

_Oh fuck. That thing just killed an Alsatian with its bare hands._ He could see the baby’s bald little head now, a head he could have held in the palm of his hand. It must be just days old, eyes closed, blissfully unaware of what was happening while it slept curled against its mother. _Why the hell did your Mam have to choose tonight to take you all for a walk in the park, bachgen?_

He reached out, grabbed her by the arms and wrenched them both round so her back was to the tree. She was nearly a foot shorter than him and he disregarded all dignity and moved his hands to her hips, lifting her up to shove her onto the bottom-most branches of the tree. As she went up he spotted the dog-lead in her hand and snatched it from her. As he turned, slipping the leather handle around his wrist, the crazy urge to laugh returned. He heard the rustling behind him as she scrambled higher into the tree towards her children.  
  
The thing was far closer already, and there was something just **wrong** in the way it moved. Something…. alien. But there was no time to wonder or worry about that now, no time to wonder what the hell was going on and what this creature was. No time even to dwell on the irony of the fact that just minutes ago he’d been running from Oliver and that fucking dog-lead that still cropped up in his nightmares. All there was time for was stepping away from the tree and spinning the Alsatian’s lead so it hissed through the air like a whip, forming a metallic circle in the air in front of him. The creature tried to leap forward and Ianto let the spinning chain catch its arm. It jerked back with a hiss, spitting at him. _Yeah, I know - hurts like fuck doesn’t it?_

And beyond it, back up on the path, a second alien thing stepped out of the copse just as Oliver arrived on the T-junction.

“What the……” It was only then, as Oliver spoke, that Ianto realised how quiet everything had gone. After the initial screams, the woman and her children had gone silent and no sound of traffic carried from the roads around. Since the dog’s death, the only sounds had been the snarls of the creature and the hiss of the spinning chain. Oliver’s voice sounded incredibly loud in that near-silence. 

The two creatures turned to the new sound immediately and Ianto suddenly knew what was going to happen. Instinct took over and surpassed everything, even hatred.

“Oliver, **run!** ” But it was too late – the second creature was too close, Ianto was too far away and even if he’d been closer, there was no way in hell he would have left the woman and her children to their fate. The second creature covered the few feet between itself and Oliver in seconds. 

The summer evening gave plenty of light. He saw the expression on Oliver’s face as the creature closed in. In that last second, their eyes met. He saw the realisation, and the fear.

The scream seemed to echo from the trees, a horrible sound that started low and went higher and higher in just the few seconds it lasted before it changed to a gurgling, gasping sound which simply faded away.

For a moment, everything seemed to slow down and every little detail became crystal-clear. Ianto could see the second of the two creatures, hunched on the ground, its teeth buried in Oliver’s throat. He could see Oliver’s arm go limp, the hated dog-lead falling out of his hand and lying there, glinting silver-and-blue against the black path. He could see the first creature start to move forward, as though to go join its fellow. Then it turned and he knew it had remembered the victims it had cornered. And he knew they were all going to die. There was nothing he could do against two of these creatures, no way he could save this family. Even as he stood his ground he knew this was it, the end. From somewhere buried in the back of his mind, words he’d not spoken in nearly five years came back: _Holy Mary Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death._ This time, he did laugh and even to his own ears it sounded half-mad. The lead spun hissing through the air, light glinting off it.

And then suddenly, there were voices. Two bulky figures came running out of the tree-line, each clasping something in their hads and there were sharp, muted noises. Then the two creatures were slumping to the ground, unmoving and the new arrivals closed in on them, one dark-clothed silhouette standing over each of the fallen creatures. A third, smaller, figure crouched briefly over Oliver before standing up and heading for the tree. 

Someone else came walking between the bodies and up to Ianto: a woman, somewhere in her late twenties, with shoulder-length hair so white it seemed to glow. She was tall, nearly his own height and she walked straight up to him as he let the chain slow and stop. She looked up into the tree and then at him. Then she suddenly smiled.

“Hey there, good-looking. Don’t suppose you’re looking for a job?” Abruptly, she held out a hand and Ianto automatically shook it. Her hand was warm, her grip firm and assured.

“Rebecca DuPris: Team Leader, Field Team Seventeen, Torchwood London,” she continued. “Fuck Hartman’s recruitment protocols – my team’s one man down and….” Her gaze slid up and down his frame and she grinned, a mischievous light in her eyes. “I **like** what I can see.”

* * *

  
  
The sound of feet approaching the steps down to the boardwalk bring him snapping back to the present and he realises that he’s huddled on the ground, face buried in his shaking hands. He hastily scrambles to his feet, scooping up the now-empty mug, trying to regain control even as Costello comes down the stairs. He keeps close to the wall and walks past her, his head down, trying to be as unobtrusive as possible as he gives her a wide berth. He's hoping to God he won’t look at him because it’s far too early to even pass himself off as a would-be visitor to the Tourist Office. Luck is (briefly) with him it seems, because she goes past without giving him so much as a second glance. 

He reaches the steps and throws one quick glance at the office door, but she’s already gone. There is something about Costello, something that has bothered him since he first saw her in London. He rarely forms snap judgements of people, but he cannot shake his first impression of the woman. He dislikes her, distrusts her. She is hiding something, he knows that much; knows it with all the conviction of a man carrying more than his own fair share of secrets.

He stands at the foot of the steps for a moment, taking long slow breaths, trying to bring himself back under control. He hasn’t let himself actually think about Oliver for over two years now, although until Daleks and Cybermen took over his dreams the man was still the cause of most of his nightmares. After several nights spent listening to the name ringing off the walls, Lisa had asked him who ‘Oliver’ was. Memories of Susan clear in his head, he’d lied to her - one of the only outright lies he’d ever told her. Placed Oliver into his early childhood, which he’d already told her something about. She’d been sympathetic, gentle. 

She wasn’t the only one he lied to about Oliver. Becca had openly told him that the mother was too deeply in shock to remember anything other than that he had saved her life, and that she was going to be given (in light of the fact that she was nursing her four-day-old daughter) just enough low-level Retcon to make her think she’d stumbled across a bunch of first-year Film Studies students making a video. The children in the meantime, she'd said were too young at four and two for Retcon and would be simply be told that what they’d seen was adults playing a game. Understanding all that had required a quick explanation of retcon, but he’d then snatched at the opportunity offered to disavow all knowledge of Oliver. As far as Torchwood was concerned, Ianto had happened to be in the park at the right time, while Oliver had been in London for unknown reasons and had simply been there at the **wrong** time. Death due to Weevil attack, the paperwork had said and they’d stowed his body in the morgue with the official story being that he’d gone under a bus. Somewhere in Cardiff lies the body of a homeless man; one of the many nameless bodies Torchwood London appropriated for the purpose of a good cover story. Above the grave, the headstone reads ‘Oliver Phillip Grant’. Even Mary, Andy and Gethin think it’s Oliver who’s buried there, think he was a not-so-tragic victim of a normal accident. 

For two years Ianto has been doing his best to forget, to bury the memories. And now, if Harkness does turn out to want what Oliver wanted… _It won’t be the same,_ he tells himself firmly. _You won’t be trapped. Won’t be a prisoner this time. As soon as she’s better, we’ll leave._ Slowly, his hands stop shaking. _Lisa,_ he reminds himself. _It’s for Lisa. Whatever it takes, remember? Doesn’t matter what it costs. You can handle it. It’s for her._ But he feels so cold.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While he carries on trying to find a way into the Hub, Ianto meets a victim of the Rift - and more of his past makes itself felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IMPORTANT TRIGGER WARNING PLEASE READ: This chapter includes graphic description of domestic violence and references to rape.

Ianto pulls himself up the stairs towards the Plass, cudgeling his brain to try and come up with another way to approach Harkness. The Rift activity locator beeps from his pocket and yanking it out, he flips it open. He calls up the mapping layer to see where the Rift surge actually is and freezes, staring in horror at the screen for what feels like an age before he snaps it shut and starts to run. Back to the bike, helmet on and he's tearing away from the Bay even before the Torchwood team have spoken to each other.

Over the noise of the bike, he can’t hear whether anything comes over the comm interceptor or not, so by the time he pulls into the derelict entrance of the industrial wasteland which is the approximate location of the Rift spike, he has no idea of how much of a lead he has on the team. He can’t imagine that one of them isn’t coming though – presumably Harper or Sato, as Harkness is already half-way to Barry by now.

He pulls the bike up on the side of the road and scrambles off, removing the helmet and stashing it. He’s just about to pull the locator out to try and get an exact fix on where the spike was when he hears something shriek from half-way up the grass-covered hill opposite the warehouses. He looks in the direction of the sound and feels his jaw drop.

“Oh, **FUCK**.” The….pteradactyl? Pteranodon? _Yes, Ianto, get the name right because **that** is really the important point here,_ he snarls at himself. _Idiot!_ The **flying dinosaur** fortunately doesn't seem to be interested in him, being far more concerned with the still feebly-moving sheep it’s just finishing gutting. Luckily, the wind is blowing downhill, carrying his scent away from the creature. Unfortunately for his peace of mind, that also means the wind carries to him the fetid odour of blood and guts.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, refusing to acknowledge how it is he recognises that smell. This is a sheep, not a human. Still, he starts to breathe through his mouth. By the time he opens his eyes again, the sheep is still and large chunks of flesh and wool are disappearing down the dinosaur’s gullet. _At least that will keep it distracted for a few minutes._ The rest of the flock, a couple of dozen, are milling around further up in the field, their pathetic bleats of fear audible even down here.

Yanking open the bike’s carry-box, he studies the contents. His Colt is there, but he doubts he could take it out with that. Looking for anything useful, he rummages through the few pieces of tech and kit. It’s the rejects from when, under Lisa’s orders, he scavenged the ruins of the Tower to replace those parts of the unit sucked into the Void. Lisa and he had kept it all because…well, because it was alien and they were Torchwood. What else was there to do with it? They could hardly dump it in a rubbish bin after all. And anyway, there was always the possibility of using it on Torchwood Three as bribery or a sop of some sort. But right now, it’s about as much use as it was to Lisa.

The sight of the tech reminds him sharply about the comm intercept and he yanks it from his jacket pocket, slamming it on just in time to hear a man’s voice: London accent – Harper. As he listens, he watches the dinosaur, which remains focused on its meal.

-“Suzie, just picked up Tosh – we should be out at the spike in about twenty minutes.”-

-“Understood, Owen. Call in when you get there.”-

So he has less than twenty minutes to do something about the creature and to plant something in its place for Harper and Sato to find to explain the Rift spike. Because from here, over on the far side of the expanse of abandoned warehouses, he can see the back wall of St Teilo’s Hospital. The room they use looks out only onto an internal courtyard, but he’s not risking Torchwood being almost within touching distance of Lisa for any longer than he can help.

The wind shifts then. It’s not a big enough change to carry his own scent to the creature, but it clearly brings the dinosaur new sensory input because it looks up suddenly with a sharp, questioning squawk and moves its head from side to side as though trying to place something. Ianto freezes where he stands but it’s seen him, and suddenly it launches itself into the air with an unnerving shriek.

He ducks under the levered pole that blocks the entrance into the industrial estate and runs full-pelt across the open stretch of concrete towards the old warehouses. The near-desolation of this little sub-corner of Cardiff was the final factor in his selection of it as their medical base and the abandoned buildings are his only hope of cover. Set into the wall of the nearest warehouse is a small, half-open door. It won’t be able to follow him through that, making it better cover then the next warehouse over, where the old loading doors sit almost fully open.

He’s always been a fast runner – school record for his year-group’s 100m every Sports Day and winger for each year’s rugby team from 11 to sixteen, when they kicked him out for “conduct unbecoming” (the headmaster’s son, who’d been in the store-cupboard with him and an enthusiastic participant in their mutual groping session, got off scott-free) - but he’s wearing jeans and boots and anyroad, he doesn’t reckon Colin Jackson himself could outrun something that can fly. He’s barely half-way across the tarmac before there is a screech from above and just behind and he hears the truly disconcerting sound of leathery wings.

He swings around, only then realising he’s still carrying the second backpack in one hand. Automatically, he throws it straight into the dinosaur’s face. It snaps at the bag and rips it, various metallic items going flying across the ground as Ianto back-pedals frantically. It seems that after all his efforts, this is how he’s going to die – torn to shreds by something that died out millions of years ago - and a sick horror grabs him by the throat. There is a reason that almost every culture has its fireside stories about man-eating monsters looming out of the dark. Mankind has been at or near the top of the food chain for millenia and the idea of being food for another creature, especially one that might not stop to check you’re dead first, is the stuff of nightmares.

It has the end of the bag in its jaws now and shakes its head violently from side to side like a terrier with a rat. Something dark, about the size of his hand flies from the shreds of nylon and starts to tumble towards the ground, but the creature moves faster than he would have believed possible, dropping the remnants of the backpack and somehow managing to snap the item out of the air. As its jaws close on it, one smaller piece falls away as it bolts the larger piece down. Quite suddenly, Ianto can smell chocolate.

 _Huh?_ Then he remembers – the woman he accepted the chocolate from last week was desperate to finish for the day, so she gave him her last three bars. When he left for the night himself, one bar had almost fallen out of his pocket and he had shoved it into the bag, leaving the other two bars in his coat.

The creature suddenly drops to the ground, looking totally alien as it stands there on the concrete, its wings outstretched as though for balance. As he watches, it reaches forward and snaps up the small chunk of chocolate left on the ground.

 _It likes chocolate._ For a moment, he just stands still, absorbed in the surrealness of it all as he stares at the dinosaur bolting down the chunk of chocolate. Then his brain seems to kick into gear. **_It likes chocolate._**

The creature is shrieking again, flapping its wings and half-hopping, half-flying towards him, its mouth snapping open and closed. It doesn’t seem to have teeth, but he really doesn’t want to find out how strong those jaws are. Yanking one of the additional bars from his pocket, he breaks it rapidly into four without bothering to unwrap it. One piece he throws to the ground several feet in front of the creature, and it makes that same flying hop forward to retrieve it. He rapidly moves a few paces on a diagonal towards the open loading doors he saw moments earlier and throws a second piece down between himself and the pter…dinosaur. It comes forward and snatches it up. The third piece and then the fourth are handed out in the same way, tempting the creature closer and closer to the doors.

“Come on then, come and get some more chocolate,” he says, trying to keep his tone calm. “Nice stuff, huh?” He breaks the last bar into four as well. The first quarter brings it almost to the entryway. He stands just inside, glancing rapidly from side to side at the two large doors. They don’t look too swollen and the runners don’t look desperately rusted. This might work. This **has** to work.

He throws the second quarter past himself and into the warehouse. The creature hops forward and stands right in the doorway, virtually next to him. For a long moment, it is still, staring into the dim interior of the building and he wonders how much it can see, whether it has some sort of instinctive aversion to enclosed spaces. Then, just as he’s beginning to panic, it jumps forward and hops towards the chocolate. Before it’s even reached it, he’s thrown the third piece further, beyond where the second has landed. Turning, he reaches up to grab the handle of the left-hand door and heaves.

Perhaps for once someone up there is smiling at him, because the door only resists for a second before it starts to move and there isn’t even very much noise. How good the dinosaur’s hearing is he has no idea, but it doesn’t even turn its head, just hops from the spot where it’s finished the first piece of chocolate to snap up the second. He hauls the thankfully well-balanced door to the middle of the doorway and runs across to the second door, to start pulling that one closed too.

The narrowing strip of light reaching into the building clearly alerts the dinosaur to the fact that something is going on because it turns abruptly and shrieks, and then suddenly it goes from a standing start to a glide and it’s coming straight for him.

He throws the fourth and last piece of chocolate across the floor to skid across the concrete underneath the creature. It’s less about bribery this time and more about the need to free up both hands, and he yanks on the door to join it to its partner as fast as possible. The last glimpse he has of the creature is of it gliding fast and low across the floor of the warehouse as the two doors meet. Then he steps backwards and slams the heavy beam down and the locking clip up even as the door shakes under the impact of the dinosaur. Before it can recover enough to really try and attack the door, he starts slamming the big steel bolts home; there are two going across from door to door and then three on each panel shooting down into the ground.

He steps back cautiously and watches and listens. He hears the creature’s shrill cry, but all the windows on this warehouse are whole and the walls and doors are thick, shutting in most of the sound. The doors move slightly as the creature again impacts with the inside of the door, but they look like they’ll hold. Which is good, because a glance at his watch tells him he has little more than 5 minutes to hide the evidence of a Rift-surfing dinosaur and get the hell away before Harper and Sato arrive.

He turns and darts back across the tarmac towards the scattered pieces of tech. He quickly settles on the transformer; a perfectly normal transformer - except that it works at 100% efficiency and no-one, not even Tech Research, can figure out how. There had been two of them in the Archives and he’d grabbed both, only for the first to blow when they tried to use it. It’s clearly not of current Earth standard, so there should be no reason for Harper and Sato to doubt it’s just come through the Rift.

He shoves the transformer and a scrap of the bag into his pocket and gathers up the remainder of the tech into the largest surviving part of the backpack before crossing the tarmac to the entrance and ducking under the pole. He bundles everything else them into the bike’s carry-box then, leaving his jacket slung across the box, he scrambles over the fence that separates the road from the field and heads for the carcass. It only takes a glance to see that the wounds it suffered weren’t inflicted by anything as small as a dog. Taking the transformer from his pocket, he hastily wipes the surface over with the scrap of bag and then drops the transformer onto the grass close to the sheep and shoves the rag into his pocket. Bending down, he takes hold of the corpse and swings it up to rest across his shoulders. It’s heavy, but far lighter than Lisa in her current state. Higher up the field, there is a small stand of trees and he heads for it. Minutes later, his shirt covered in blood and other things he’d rather not dwell on, he runs back down to the spot where the sheep died. There is some blood and torn fleece, but no solid evidence and a few moments spent churning the rain-soaked grass to mud leaves little sign of the death. He sprints back to the bike. Dragging the jacket on to hide the stains, he pulls the helmet on and starts the bike. As he pulls away, a glance in the mirror shows the big black SUV that Harkness drove last night coming round the corner. _Talk about cutting it close._

He turns off the quiet road within a mile, heading for the hospital. His shirt is sticking to him under the jacket and he can smell blood and sheep-shit. The skin across the back of his neck is itching as the source of the smell dries on him. He only has one more change of clothes other than his suits, but he cannnot bear to remain in the stinking shirt and jeans. And besides which, he cannot hang around the Bay looking like a horror film extra.

As he leaves the shed where the bike is kept, the comm intercept bursts into life once more.

-“Suzie?”- It’s Harper again. -“We found it – some bit of tech. Tosh is running prelimnary checks now. No witnesses. We’re on our way back.”-

-“Fine. Jack rang - he’s on his way back as well. Apparently, the mammoth turned out to be a Newfoundland.”-

-“You what?”-

-“Some dog-breeder in Barry is trying to beat the world record for the size of their Newfoundlands. And the witness was drunk.”-

-“How fucking drunk does someone have to be to mistake a dog for a bleedin’ mammoth?”-

-“However that may be, he’s on his way back.”-

Dismissing the whole mammoth affair from his mind, Ianto leaves the bike outside the hospital and walks through the main door. Within seconds, he feels his heart-rate pick up and he speeds up along the corridor. Keith’s job during the day is to keep an eye on Lisa’s readouts and to keep scanning the newly installed CCTV monitors for uninvited guests. Usually when Ianto arrives back earlier or later than expected, Keith will meet him as he did last night but now there is nothing – no Keith appearing from the ward, no voice shouting a query about his early return.

With every step, Ianto’s fear increases. He **knew** Keith was wavering and he left her with him. He put her in danger. _Oh God, he should have spotted me by now, should have called or come out. Where the hell is he? What has he done?_

He breaks into an outright run and goes through the ward door at full speed. As the door slams open, he’s sure he’s about to find at least one body – either Lisa’s, in which case Keith’s death is as inevitable as the next sunrise, or Keith’s own corpse, in which case he will find Lisa wherever she has been taken, no matter by who.

Instead, the first thing he sees is Lisa lying in repose within the life-support system, her eyes closed as the respirator cuts time into tiny pieces. The second thing he sees is Keith startling up from the metal chair. The look of utter confusion on the man’s face tells its own story. Keith blinks at Ianto for a few seconds as the Welshman stalks across the ward towards him, and Ianto is half-way to him before Keith’s eyes widen as he takes in Ianto’s appearance.

“What the…” Keith starts to say. Anger, worry, stress, tension, relief and fear all combine and it seems like an echo of his earlier memory when he throws the punch that sends Keith reeling back.

“You bastard,” he snarls. He steps forward and the second punch drives Keith to the floor. “You fucking bastard, you were **asleep!** You’re supposed to be looking after her and you were asleep, you lazy shit! Don’t try and deny it.” He’s above Keith now and he reaches down and grabs a handful of the close-cropped hair in one hand and drags Keith up to his knees. His other fist draws back and he glares down into Keith’s face as he pulls the other man’s head up and back. The smaller man's face is twisted with pain and he lifts both hands to Ianto’s wrist, trying to pull free. For a moment, there is a savage satisfaction in being the one **causing** the pain instead of being the recipient, then -

_Dragged by the hair to his knees and held in place, blow after blow raining down from above until his mouth is full of the coppery taste of blood and he can’t see through the haze of pain…_

He lets go of Keith’s hair as though scalded, staggering backwards with one hand over his mouth as he shuts his eyes, fighting the renewed nausea that threatens to overwhelm him. Oh God, what is he becoming? The Cybermen and Oliver between them are turning him into the sort of monster he spent the second half of his childhood swearing that he would never be. If The Bitch could see him now, it would be the proof of every comment about ‘bad blood’ that she ever threw at him. What would Andy say if he saw this? What look would he see on Mary’s face? On Gethin’s? He doesn’t even let himself think of Mam and Tad because they refused to believe he would ever disappoint them, even when he did.

He opens his eyes slowly, dreading what he will see, almost convinced that Lisa will have woken despite her drugged state and will be looking at him in horror as she sees who is the more monstrous of the two of them. Instead he sees Keith backing away slowly with one hand cupped to his jaw, staring at Ianto like he’s never seen him before. Their eyes meet for a second and when Keith speaks, it’s in a tone Ianto has never heard from him before. With a sickening lurch, he recognises it as the way he used to speak to Oliver when the other man came home looking for any reason he could find to hand out a beating – cautious, placatory. Judging the impact of every word and seeking to find the phrase that will forestall the violence. _Not that it ever worked._

“She’s all right, Ianto. She’s fine. You…. you look like the morning didn’t go as planned?”

It’s the first time he’s used Ianto’s first name in weeks and Ianto closes his eyes again briefly, turning his head down and away; he cannot bring himself to meet Keith’s eyes for a second longer. After this, he wouldn’t blame the man for deciding that he is the bigger danger, not Lisa.

“No. It…. didn’t. I…. I need to clean up.” He turns and starts to walk away and then stops and looks over his shoulder. “Keith? For what it’s worth – I’m sorry. My fault, it was my fault. I had no right to… It won’t happen again. It was my fault. I’m sorry.” He walks away before Keith can reply, wondering if the man has any idea why Ianto has just reiterated where the blame for his attack lies when any normal person would consider it obvious.

He’d heard the “I’m sorry” from Oliver over and over again at first – not for long, of course; the apologies had stopped quickly. But even when he **had** heard them, they were always tempered with a denial of guilt. “I’m sorry, but: ‘rough day at work’; ‘traffic was bad’; ‘I’ve got a headache’; ‘It was the last straw’”. Those were the ‘reasons’ in the first few weeks. After that, the blame shifted and it became “I’m sorry but... ‘you answered me back’; ‘you didn’t listen’; ‘you didn’t do what I told you’, ‘you know I don’t like….’. Then even those apologies stopped and it was all Ianto’s fault, what he deserved.

By the end, Ianto had come to believe it himself. Battered, abused, terrified and even occasionally drugged into compliance, he’d given up. Until that last night.

* * *

Curled on the floor, his arms wrapped around his head and his knees drawn to his chest, trying to protect himself as much as he could as kick after kick after kick thudded home. Somewhere above him, Oliver was ranting and raving, the words nearly indecipherable through his rage and Ianto’s own pain. God alone knew what he’d done this time, to trigger this. It was his fault, of course; it was always his fault. It must have been, because most of the time Oliver wasn’t like this. At least, he hadn’t been in the early days, so it must be Ianto’s doing.

Another kick slammed into his ribs and then there was a hand in his hair, pulling him upward. He bit back the gasp of pain, not daring to react. For a fleeting moment, he wished his hair wasn’t so long - it used to hurt less when his hair was shorter. But the last time he asked about getting his hair cut, Oliver asked if he was planning on being disobedient. He’d shaken his head, denied it; promised he’d obey. But he got a beating anyway. To ‘remind him’, Oliver had said. Of what happened if he disobeyed.

The hand in his hair dragged him to his knees before releasing him. Through a haze of tears and pain, he could see Oliver standing right in front of him, towering above him. _Oh God, no. No, please, don’t make me…._

“Get up.” The voice was harsh, Oliver’s breath coming in rasps, but Ianto felt a surge of relief as he staggered upright. At least **that** wasn’t going to happen. Even so, he kept his eyes carefully down. He learned that lesson a long time ago.

“Get upstairs.” Relief was gone so suddenly, it felt almost as though something he’d been leaning on was yanked away. His stomach turned over and even knowing he had to move, he couldn’t force the action to start. It felt as though he was falling even as he stood stock-still, the fear coursing through him.

“I **said** , get upstairs. Into the bedroom. Now.”

“Ollie, please, don’t. Please, I….” The back-handed blow was so hard he stumbled and fell sideways against the wall, almost falling to his knees, his head ringing as he forced himself back upright.

“I told you what would happen next time you pissed me off, didn’t I? Now see what you’re making me do.” Oliver stepped closer and Ianto started to shrink back, only to be stopped by a vice-like grip on his arm. The other hand gripped his jaw and lifted his head until he was forced to look into a pair of cold green eyes.

“It’s your fault, Ianto. Every time this happens, it’s your fault. You know that. You broke the rules, didn’t you?”

He nodded, but… _Don’t ask me, please don’t ask me_ because he didn’t know which rule he’d broken tonight. The house was clean, he hadn’t even gone into the garden, he’d made dinner, the kitchen was spotless….. He didn’t know what he’d done but he couldn’t ask because then Oliver would get angry again.

“You have to learn to do as I say,” Oliver said. “You think I enjoy having to do this to you?”

 _~Yes_ _.~_ For one sickening moment, Ianto thought the word had actually come out of his mouth and he cringed. But there was no change in Oliver’s face or voice, just that same look. The look that said Ianto was nothing more than a foolish child. That yet again, he’d been stupid. Yet again, he’d broken the rules. Yet again, he had to be punished.

 _~You’re not a child.~_ It was the same voice and abruptly Ianto realised it was in his head. ~ _You’re not a child, Ianto – you’re nineteen years old and a dog doesn’t deserve to be treated like this, never mind you.~_ He knew this voice, knew that this voice had been there before though the knowledge of where and when was lost – there were a lot of blank spots in his memories of the last two years. What he **could** remember was bad enough. And he could also remember that this voice was dangerous. This voice was angry, and anger was something Ianto hadn’t allowed himself to feel for a long, long time. Anger was dangerous. Anger got him punished. He mustn’t listen to this voice.

Oliver’s eyes started to narrow and he tilted his head to one side.

“You’re not about to disobey me, are you, Yan?” As if the nickname itself wasn’t warning enough, there was that note in his voice, the diamond-hard tone that Ianto had quickly learned to dread. He swallowed hard and shook his head rapidly, ignoring the way it made his vision swim. One word, one look, one breath out of place and it was only going to get worse.

“No. No, I swear, I’m not...I won’t….” He dropped his gaze again.

“Upstairs.” Oliver let him go with a shove and he turned and stumbled towards the stairs, not daring to stop or even speak

 _~Oh hell, Ianto. How did you end up here?~_ The voice whispered again and there was a note of bewilderment to it. ~ _He just beat the hell out of you and now you’ve just what – been sent to your room? And you’re taking it?! What’s he **done** to you, Ianto? ~ _In response, he tried to…shut a door in his mind, was the only way he could phrase it. Tried to shut the voice up, lock it away along with what he couldn’t remember. He mustn’t listen to this angry, strong voice. If he listened, he’d be punished. Again. 

He heard Oliver behind him, picking up the phone and dialling and his heart-rate shot upwards until he could actually feel the frantic pounding in his chest.

 _~What’s he doing?_ ~ For a moment, there was silence and Ianto thought perhaps he’d shut the voice up, that perhaps he was safe from it now. Then the voice came back and now it sounded desperate. ~ ** _What?_** _Oh God,_ _Ianto, **please.** You have to listen to me. This time, you **have** to listen. You have to… you have to trust me. You **have** to get out.~_

 _He’ll come after me. If I leave, he’ll kill me._ He’d known that for months, now. The first time Oliver had had to drive them to hospital, after Ianto made him angry with the karaoke thing, he’d spent the entire journey warning Ianto to keep his mouth shut. Told him exactly what would happen if he said anything to anyone. What would happen if he tried to leave. Oliver never made threats he didn’t keep – which was why he was on the phone now. Because the punishment hadn’t finished yet.

_~Oh, God. You know what he threatened to do last time, don’t you. And you’re going to walk into the bedroom and wait for him.~_

 _What choice do I have?_ Even inside his own head, he sounded…exhausted. Defeated. There **were** no choices for him any more. Oliver had taken them all away. All that was left was what Oliver chose to hand out.

 _~There’s always a choice, Ianto.~_ The anger in the voice faded and now it sounded regretful, sad. ~ _And you’ve always been strong enough to make what you thought to be the right one. No matter… No matter what it cost you.~_

There was something very strange about the words, but Ianto had stopped **thinking** properly months ago and he couldn’t work out what it might be. 

He reached the top of the stairs and turned to go down the hall to the bedroom. Opposite him, little more than arm’s reach away, was the full-length hall mirror. For just a moment, he met his own gaze.

 _~Ianto, **please** \- look at yourself,~_ the voice whispered, thick with desperation. For a second, even though his reflection never changed, he would have sworn that arms wrapped gently around him from behind and that he felt the warm pressure of another body. It was as though someone stood pressed close behind him, holding him. Oddly, it wasn’t threatening. If anything, it felt – safe. For a moment, he would have sworn a hand brushed gently along his jaw. ~ ** _Look_** _at yourself.~_

Although he walked past this mirror several times a day, he ignored it. Had taught himself to ignore it. But standing there, staring into his own eyes with that voice whispering in his head, he looked.

He couldn’t see properly through his right eye because of the bruising (yesterday morning, because the postman had smiled at him which meant he was being a whore). The right side of his mouth was swollen, his lip split, and he could see the bruises along his hairline (two days ago, punched in the face and dragged across the kitchen floor by his hair for dropping a slice of toast on the floor). His hair, falling to his shoulder-blades these days, partially hid the almost-healed tear to his left ear (ten days ago, because he was distracting Ollie by fiddling with his ear-ring when Oliver was **trying** to watch the news. He didn’t know where the little gold dragon was. The present from Gethin when he was sixteen). He could just see the bruises that curled round his shoulders from his back as well as the long bruises around his neck and the two small bruises at the base of his throat (five days ago Oliver had come home early in a foul mood, snarling about stuck-up Special Ops wankers who swanned in and took a case from him. For Ianto, the rest of the night was a blank space but he woke up with those bruises, and others to boot). The bruises on his stomach were the rough oval of Oliver’s instep (two days ago, when he took too long to get up off the floor). He looked skinnier than he remembered being, but he barely ate any more - coffee and cigarettes during the day and then a few mouthfuls of whatever Oliver told him to make for dinner. His stomach hurt when he ate. The skin was drawn taut over his jawbone, and the white jeans _I hate white jeans_ hung off him, showing the two layers of finger-shaped bruises along his hips (five days ago and then again last night, because he tried to say ‘no’. He should know by now he’s not allowed to say that). There were narrow bruises around each upper arm and raw marks on his wrists (five days ago) that would take several more days to heal. Along his clearly-discernible ribs, the rainbow nature of the myriad of bruises showed their differing ages. His legs hurt from the kicks and his back ached from the neck down, especially just near his right hip. There’d been blood every time he’d gone to the bathroom since whatever had happened five days ago and since then every deep breath sent pain shooting through his side. Tomorrow, he’d look even worse. He had no idea why it had got this bad. He didn’t used to get Oliver so angry all the time.

 _~How long has this been going on now? ~_ The voice paused briefly again, almost as though it were waiting for an answer. _Or listening to one._

Even as that strange thought surfaced, the voice spoke again, full of an odd sort of grief. ~ _Two years? Oh, Ianto….Two years.~_ The grief faded and the anger returned. But where Oliver’s anger inspired terror, this anger seemed to slowly creep into Ianto’s very bones. ~ _I’ve been watching this for too damn long. You jump at every loud noise. You flinch when he moves a finger. You only open your mouth when he speaks directly to you. When did you last choose what to watch? What to eat? What to wear? When were you last out of this house of your own choice?_ ~ The voice turned harder, more desperate. ~ _When did **you** last choose to have sex? And what to do when you did? When did you last choose who to have sex **with**? Two years. What are you going to look like after the next two? How long before he pumps you full of drugs again and leaves you with no memory of what you’ve done - or what’s been done to you? How long before he decides to turn you into a junkie for real? He’ll do it – he’ll do it for the power it’ll give him over you. You want to spend the next few years of your life begging to be allowed to blow his friends so he’ll give you a hit? God, now I understand why you… Look, how long do you think it will be before he puts you back in the hospital? And what will you do when he does; lie to them again? He’s going to kill you one of these days – you do know that, don’t you? Oh God, Ianto – please, this time **listen** to me!~_

He stared at the battered, beaten figure in the mirror. He turned on the spot and stared down to the ground floor. He could still hear Oliver’s voice on the phone. He would have called Frank Robb, because that’s who he’d said he’d call the next time Ianto needed to be punished. Though the words were too faint to make out, he knew what Oliver was saying. ‘Come and watch’. ‘Come and join in’. ‘Teach him a lesson’.

When his feet began to move, it was almost as though they did so of their own volition. He went up the hall into the meticulously neat and tidy master bedroom and walked past the bed to stop at the big bay window.

 _What the hell are you playing at?_ The second, familiar, voice was almost whimpering, fear evident in every word. _What do you think you’re **doing**?_ He opened the curtains and put his hand on the window latch. _You can’t be serious! You know what will happen when he finds you. You think things are bad now, you wait until he catches you and brings you back. Stop **thinking** like this. If you’d just **behave** yourself and do what he wants, it wouldn’t happen. He wouldn’t have to do these things, he’d be like he used to be and everything would be fine. It’s your fault, you **make** him do this, you make it all happen._ Hands on the window, he hesitated for a second. Then the new voice spoke up.

_~What will you be like after five years of this? Ten - if you’re not dead in the ground? Because he won’t ever stop, Ianto. Doesn’t matter what you do, how hard you try. He won’t. Ever. **Stop.** Trust me on this – if you stay, this will only end when you’re dead.~_

The second, familiar, voice cut in, sounding terrified. _Shut **up**! Don’t **listen**! Get into bed._ He heard footsteps coming up the stairs and both voices started screaming at him, the first sounding like it was barking an order, the second almost incoherent with fear.

_~Get out – Ianto, get out **now**! **MOVE!~**_

_Get away from the window, before he realises. Get into **bed** , he’s coming, just get into the bed and let him – _

“Rape me. Again.” It was the first time he’d ever used the word to describe what happened. It seemed to cut through the noise in his head, and both voices shut off instantly.

His hands moved, turning the white plastic handle and he pushed the window outwards as far as it would go. The barely-perceptible sound of rain grew louder. It was almost as though he watched from outside his own body, watched from somewhere near the light in the ceiling as he climbed, still barefoot and shirtless, onto the windowsill and slid out through the narrow gap into the icy October rain. A good job he was so skinny – he’d never have made it even six months ago.

He was standing on the outer window ledge, half turned towards the room, when the door opened and Oliver walked in. For a moment, the bigger man just stood, staring at the empty bed in clear disbelief. Then his head snapped round and he looked through the window straight at Ianto. His face flooded with rage and he started to move, one hand clenching into a fist.

“Get back in here, you little bastard!” For a single heart-beat, Ianto stood still, staring into the room at the man he’d made himself think of as his boyfriend for two long years. 

Then he turned away and jumped, falling the single-storey drop to the garden below. As soon as he landed, pain tore up through his right ankle and he was thrown forward to his hands and knees. Both voices were suddenly screaming at him but he ignored them and the pain and pushed himself upright, stumbling towards the wall. Even as he heard Oliver bellow his name through the window, he was up and onto the flower-bed, the soil turning to mud under his feet as he used the 18-inch boost it gave him to snag the top of the back wall and haul himself up and over.

“Ianto! Don’t you dare. Get back here **now**!” Oliver shouted. He heard a thud of a fist on glass. “I’ll fucking kill you when I get my hands on you!”

He dropped down to the filthy, rain-slick alley-way and, despite the protests of his ankle, started to run.

* * *

The icy water cascading out of the shower head reminds him sharply of the rain that night and the smooth wet tiles under his feet echo the flagstones of the alley. He closes his eyes again, refusing to look at the red-tinged water running down the drain, trying not to remember the number of times it’s been his own blood swirling away with the water. _In the past. That’s done with._ Yet if Harkness is like that….

He slams the side of his fist into the wall, furious and disgusted with his own cowardice. _‘If’ he’s like that. **IF.** Marco wasn’t; Peter wasn’t. Lisa isn’t. _Yet he can’t shake off the memory of the causal dismissal, of both himself and the other survivors; can’t shake off the feeling that it hints at a cruelty behind the handsome face.

_Doesn’t matter. **You** don’t matter, **Lisa** matters. Get the damn job first, then worry about if he’s like Oliver - and if he is, he is. Live with it, you worthless shit. You did before. Or are you going to tell Lisa she can die just because you don’t want to risk a bit of pain? Oliver was right – you’re pathetic._

He shuts off the icy spray, dries himself as best he can with towels that are still damp from the first shower and re-dresses in the red T-shirt, black jeans and heavy black denim shirt. If he has his way, he’ll never wear white denim again.

He’s just opening the door of the bathroom, dreading having to walk back into the ward to face Keith, when the door is wrenched further open from the other side and Keith jolts back to avoid walking straight into him.

“The unit,” Keith snaps. “There’s something wrong – she can’t breathe.”

Ianto runs, passing Keith as the other man turns, and charges through the door at top speed. As soon as he’s inside the ward, he knows it’s serious. Smoke is coming from behind a panel on one side of the unit and the respirator is making a harsh, wheezing gasp that reminds him incongruously of Darth Vader’s final scene in ‘Return of the Jedi'. Lisa’s eyes are open and she is turning her head from side to side, trying to see what is going on.

‘Ianto!” Her voice is filled with fear, and as he arrives at her side her eyes lock onto him. ‘Can’t….can’t…” She takes a gasping breath, the strained sound a vivid reminder of the sheer weight of metal that encases her chest. They both know that he nearly killed her when he dragged her from the conversion unit on the day of the Battle – the pressure on her chest and whatever they have done to her inside means she cannot breathe unaided for long, and it’s even worse now than it was then. One of the images that haunts what little sleep is not given to nightmares of the past is that of her dying like this, fighting for breath while he looks on helplessly.

“Easy, love, easy. Hang on….” He crouches down and yanks off the panel on the side of the unit, flinching back at the wave of heat that comes out and trying not to choke on the acrid fumes. As the smoke begins to clear, he can see the problem: a mass of what were once plastic-covered wires feeding between two circuit boards have melted and fused onto an intricate network of thin steel strips.

Keith is hovering behind him, looking over his shoulder, and at the sight he bites off a curse before darting away and returning seconds later with the smaller of the painfully-gathered tool kits. Ianto nods his thanks and starts to work. Nothing has actually caught fire, thank God but the heat beating from the circuitry as he works says it was a near thing. It takes him nearly five minutes to remove the whole fused mess and all the time he can hear Lisa gasping for breath above him. When he removes the last of the fried components, both men’s gazes lift to the respirator, and after a second or two its pitch changes and Lisa’s rasping breath eases slightly.

“Think it’s gonna hold?” Keith asks. Ianto draws one hand over his mouth and down his jaw, shaking his head in despair.

“With all that out, everything will go through the secondary system for now, but…” he shrugs. “Lisa? How long will it hold?” He hates asking her anything about the support system. Every time he has to acknowledge the additional information that is now stored inside her head, it feels like a betrayal of everything that she was. Everything she **will** be again. Every time she accesses that information, she seems to become more remote and to take longer to come back to him. But he doesn’t have the skills or the equipment to assess the system himself. So he has to ask.

In the momentary silence before she speaks, he stands up and looks down into her face. Her expressionless face; in which the brown eyes that used to be, that **can** be, so loving are cold and remote. At his shoulder he hears the hitch in Keith’s breathing and for a moment, his own guilt and the other’s rancour are forgotten and he feels pity for Keith because at least Ianto already knew about Torchwood and aliens before the Cybermen and the Daleks tore his world apart at the seams. Keith has had to take it all in at one go – small wonder he blames the only other person who knows anything about the situation. 

“The secondary system will function at 66% efficiency for approximately 24 - 36 hours.”

Ice twists inside his chest. Sixty-six percent efficiency is barely enough to keep her alive – 60% is the fatal lower limit. She continues in the same terrifyingly expressionless monotone.

“Stress levels are monitored and building. When critical stress levels are reached, the system will cease operating instantaneously and this unit will no longer function.” There is no way to discern whether by ‘unit’ she means the life support system - or herself. He has to swallow hard to get enough moisture to be able to speak, because his mouth has gone as dry as dust. _Oh God._

“What do we need to do to get the main system back up again?” His voice sounds like it belongs to someone else, coming from far away. He sounds almost as expressionless as Lisa.

“Replacement of wiring systems, circuit boards and steel plating will allow main system to function at estimated 75% efficiency.”

“Seventy-five? Why?” Lisa has told him before that one of the reasons the support unit is so noisy is that it is only operating at about 85% efficiency (86.657% to be precise), in part due to the fact that the hospital’s antiquated wiring can’t carry the sheer amount of electricity needed to keep the system running at full power. But seventy-five percent?

“Gold wiring and platinum plating on the inner circuit boards have also been damaged by the rise in internal temperature. This will result in previous efficiency level being unobtainable.”

He draws a deep breath and makes himself stay calm. When she’s like this, she can only answer the direct question she’s been asked – she can’t think around the problem.

“Okay. Once we’ve replaced everything I’ve just removed, will the gold and platinum systems be stable?”

“Insufficient data to ascertain.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“That damage previously sustained has triggered a decay process.”

“Great.” He rubs one hand over his face, trying to think, then runs the hand through his hair. It’s getting too long for his liking. He’s kept his hair short for five years now, but haircuts are another thing there is no time or money for. “Right, once the replacement parts are in, how long will it take before you can determine whether the system is stable?”

“Approximately 48.7 hours.”

“Can the gold and platinum elements be repaired?”

“Negative. For any increase in efficiency, full replacement is required.”

“W…what about when we have access to more electricity? Will that increase efficiency?

“Negative. Damage already sustained to gold and platinum elements in such that they cannot carry sufficient charge to increase efficiency.”

 _Oh fuck._ He closes his eyes for a moment, feeling despair wash over him.

“What?” He opens his eyes at Keith’s question and looks over at the other man. Keith’s lip is split and the skin at the corner of his mouth is swollen and darker than it should be. Guilt floods Ianto but he pushes it ruthlessly away. He has no time for guilt, no time for questions. He has a job to do. Getting the main system back up and running is not the problem, even within the time frame Lisa has given them, but getting the cobbled-together system to work at anything better than her predicted level of 75% efficiency is going to take the grace of God.

He points to the unit. “This thing has about £3,000 of gold and about £50,000 of platinum in it. We don’t replace it, the whole system might seize up sometime in the next few days.”

Keith’s jaw drops and he stares at Ianto in shock for a moment. “What? But… how the hell are we going to raise that kind of cash? I mean… you guys rented your place, so did I. And even if we sold the bike and the van, we’d not make that much. How the hell can we…?”

Ianto slashes one hand through the air. “One thing at a time. We don’t have to replace it today.” But he’s already desperately trying to think of how he can possibly find the money. The gold he has an idea where he can go to obtain, but as for the platinum…

He bends to scoop up the damaged parts he removed minutes earlier, holding it up for Keith to see. “This is what we have to concentrate on today.”

He steps to the unit and cups Lisa’s cheek in his hand but she doesn’t respond at all. Ice trails down his spine; his touch always brings some sort of response, always - even after he has asked her to access Cyber-tech information. But this time, she continues to stare straight up at the ceiling, her face and eyes still devoid of every emotion. That and the metal shrouding her head combine to make her look something other than human. The fear of losing her not to death but to the conversion itself is suddenly very real.

He looks up and sees something of his own fear in Keith’s face. For a moment their eyes lock, until hate and anger start to creep back into Keith’s eyes and Ianto drops his gaze.

“I’ll start the repairs,” he says softly. He carries all the damaged parts over to the table, shoving aside crockery to place everything down and is about to start work when he remembers the comm. intercept. He heads out of the room, ignoring Keith’s questioning call and goes back to the bathroom, fetching everything from his jacket pockets.

After rigging the comm. intercept up to the laptop so he can hear it, and after getting himself more coffee to stave off the oncoming headache, he gets to work dismantling the entire apparatus and working out what he can replace with their current spare parts and what he will have to buy. Behind him, he hears Keith start to talk to Lisa. Random, almost disjointed sentences that slowly become a litany of childhood memories. It’s several minutes before Ianto finally hears her respond, her voice sounding normal again as she adds her own recollections and shares in her brother’s. Ianto has to stop work for a moment to calm himself down and stop himself shaking. _She’s back. She’s okay. It’s going to be ok._

He works in near silence whilst the other two talk, Keith keeping the conversation to summer holidays and Christmases from their youth. Then he hears the question he’d dreaded.

“What… what happened to your lip, Keith?” Ianto closes his eyes, draws in a breath, reaching for the courage to tell the truth.

Keith’s mobile rings. ‘Air on a G String’, which startled Ianto the first time he heard it – you’d never think of Keith as the sort of bloke who liked anything remotely in the ‘classical’ genre. He listens as he finishes the list of everything he needs to buy, realising with a sinking heart that this will wipe out all their funds

“Mum? You ok?...Yeah, I’m still just meandering, I guess…Does it matter? I’m just in some hotel…No, I’ve not heard from him.” There is a sudden tension in Keith’s voice and Ianto turns from the table to find Keith looking directly at him.

“No, Mum, I’ve no idea where he is…. Maybe it’s just his way of coping… Dunno. I mean, he might’ve but he never mentioned still having any family… Yeah, I know… Mum, if I hear from him I’ll let you know, but what’s this all about any…. Oh.” There is a short, tense pause and Keith’s eyes flicker from Ianto to Lisa and back and there is a surge of such pain in the dark eyes that Ianto feels another momentary wash of pity for Keith Hallett.

“Well, yeah, I guess….I mean…” The other man swallows audibly and his gaze goes back to his sister. “I understand, Mum… Yeah, if I hear from him I will…. Just let me know when, and whereever I am, I’ll come back… No, it’s fine. The job won’t miss me for another couple of weeks and I’ll be back, I promise. I just - you know, need some time… Ok, Mum… Yeah, love you too.”

He rings off and looks at Ianto, who raises an eyebrow.

“Well? What did she want?”

“It sounded serious.” Lisa’s words practically overlap his, and Keith glances from one to the other with a grimace.

“She wanted to know where I was and…” he nods at Ianto, “wanted to know if I’d heard from you or knew where you were.”

“Why?” Concern is a cold, clammy feeling in his gut. If the Institute want to, they will be able to track him down – hiding from Torchwood is almost impossible, but if they are putting pressure on the Halletts to find him, then it’s possible someone has figured out the truth about Lisa.

Keith takes a long breath, and for a moment Ianto can do nothing but stand motionless, waiting to hear that he is being hunted. Then-

“They want to have a memorial service.” His gaze shifts to his sister once again. “For you. Mum said it was time to ‘accept the truth’.”

There is a moment of silence. In his head, Ianto can still hear Simone Bishop as she huddled in her husband’s arms, sobs for her little sister tearing her voice into shreds even as her words had Ianto on the verge of blurting out the whole truth. Simone knew what ‘missing’ had to mean when it came to the battle-site that had been the pride of Canary Wharf only hours earlier, but at the time both her parents had turned on her, insisting that the absence of a body meant hope, not death. Clearly, at some point they have changed their minds.

“W..when?” Lisa asks and the quaver in her voice is very faint.

“Some time in the next couple of weeks.” Keith looks back at Ianto. “And if I hear from you I’m supposed to invite you. To come along and to say something if you want. To quote Mum, ‘She really loved him. He was the only one she brought home I ever totally approved of.’ Dad and Simone agree, apparently.”

He swallows at that and looks away, trying not to remember evenings at Lisa’s old local, trying not to remember the looks of her family as they slowly moved from appraising to accepting to approving. Trying not to remember Simone’s wedding, three months before the Battle, when the photographer called for “all the men of the families” to come and be photographed. Lisa, grinning, shoved him forward to join a gang of fathers, brothers, uncles and male cousins. Keith just laughed away his protests, threw an arm over his shoulder and drew him into the camera’s eye. Simone and Michael gave them a copy of the photo and Lisa placed it on top of the television. It’s still there, if the landlord hasn’t already got rid of everything in the absence of both rent and tenants.

He’d seen the way Lisa looked that day as she watched her sister, pride and love and longing all wrapped into one. He remembers dancing with both sisters, the shining bride and the beautiful maid of honour. He remembers Lisa half-dragging him out of the reception after one of their dances. They didn’t even make it to their room, hiding themselves away in an outside nook of the old manor house, and when she came, with her skirt hitched up around her waist and one leg hooked over his hip, the birds roosting on the window-ledge above startled at the noise she made and flew away and he laughed even as he came himself and she buried her face into his neck, gasping at the way it made him move deep inside her. He remembers sneaky peeks into the window of the jewelers that sat between the flat and the Tube station. But then the Ghost Shift Project started, making for 16-hour days seven days a week. They got home only to collapse into bed and sleep for what felt like a few minutes before the alarm clock dragged them back awake. So when they finally escaped on the pre-arranged holiday to Brittany, he hadn’t yet bought a ring and the whole week they were away they barely left the tent, just sleeping and making love. He promised himself he’d start looking for rings properly when they got home. And days after their return, the world went to pieces.

“Huh!” Lisa’s voice startles him from his reverie and he moves to her side, looking down at her. She manages to smile, but if she could still cry he knows there would be tears in her eyes. “I guess we should call that a seal of approval. Or maybe a sad comment on my previous boyfriends.” He can’t look away from her because all he can think is that Mr. and Mrs. Hallett would certainly not approve of him if they knew anything about his past. And how could they approve of him if they saw him now, saw the game he’s playing with Harkness?

“What do you want me to say?” Keith steps to the other side of the unit, looking from one to the other of them. Ianto sighs. He doesn’t want to hurt the Halletts’ feelings, but there really is no alternative.

“Say you haven’t heard from me. If we’re lucky, we’ll be in the Hub by then but even so, I won’t be able to leave Lisa for long enough to make anything in London.”

Keith nods slowly and Ianto moves away, walking to the table and scooping up the list he’s written.

“I need your cash card – there’s not enough in our account to cover what I have to buy.” He turns to find Keith is still standing on the other side of the unit, holding out the card. He goes back and takes it with a nod of acknowledgement, shoving it and the list into his pocket. He already knows the PIN.

“I need to go to a few different places to get everything. Should be back in a couple of hours.” He hesitates, but he’s not going to be able to listen to the intercept over the noise of the bike, nor while he’s going from shop to shop for what they need.

“Come here,” he says. He takes a few minutes showing Keith how to use the Rift Activity Locator and view the mapping layer. “Keep listening to the intercept: I’ve got it set to the right channel now.” He pulls out the mobile he bought to replace the one lost while fleeing a Cyberman. Cost, again, was a factor so it has a severely limited number of minutes and text. “If there’s any activity, check the location. If it’s within a mile of here, call me. And if they say they’re leaving the Hub, text me who’s going where. Got it?”

Keith nods. Ianto looks at him, looks at the bruise coming up around his split lip and then meets his eyes again. Keith lifts one hand to touch the bruise and then shakes his head very faintly before his eyes cut to Lisa.

“She hasn’t a chance without this, does she?” Keith asks. He shakes his head and Keith sighs.

“Get a move on then. Get back here and get this fixed, Ianto.”

He nods, then moves over to the unit and kisses Lisa once more. She responds as she always does, her mouth opening to his, but the touch and temperature of her lips are not the only thing that has changed. She doesn’t taste like Lisa anymore – she hasn’t done since the first time they kissed after the Battle. She tastes of metal and oil and pain and there are moments when he has to fight to remember what it was like when she tasted of peppermint and chocolate and oranges.

He wants to slide one hand down her neck like he always used to, but the steel encases her from chin to shoulder. She always loved it when he stroked or kissed her neck – no matter how harried or stressed she was, she would practically melt into him, lifting her arms to wrap them around him, one hand playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. At work she’d start to laugh and then push him away, telling him firmly to ‘behave’. He’d grin and wink and walk away slowly, feeling her eyes on him. At home, he’d keep kissing her neck, breathing in her smell. He would wrap one arm around her and let his other hand slide down her side and over her hip before wandering lower, teasing her until her breath caught in her throat, and she’d press further against him and smile, because he was always hard by then just from her smell and the feel of her and …

But her arms don’t move because they are so heavy she can barely lift one, never mind both. And amongst the myriad of things about her conversion and how they are going to get her well again that he doesn’t let himself think too much about is the metal that encases her lower body. She asked him a few days after the Battle what they would do if, even when she was ‘herself’ again, the conversion had left her unable to have sex. He’d leaned over her and kissed her and told her that he loved her and nothing else mattered.

Now he breaks the kiss gently and she looks up at him and he knows she’s thinking about the same conversation so he smiles down at her, hoping she knows that he still means it. Making love with her was never less than warmth and delight, but he wouldn’t care if it could never happen again so long as he can hold her and know she’s well again.

And then, jarringly, he remembers that morning and Harkness, the warmth of the man beneath his hand and he remembers the twin surges of heat and how it felt when they met and the fleeting thoughts that stabbed through his mind. And what the hell kind of selfish bastard does that make him, to even **think** about being with someone else when his girlfriend is spending her every waking moment in varying levels of agony?

She smiles up at him, trying to conceal the pain in her eyes and his heart breaks a little more. Swallowing, he looks down at his watch, then lifts his eyes to meet her gaze again.

“I'm sorry, love, – another hour to go.” Another hour before they can give her any more medication, for what little good it does now. She is building up a resistance to the drugs he has been able to get his hands on – the only reason he hasn’t tried heroin or cocaine in controlled doses is because he doesn’t trust the crap the dealers would sell. She nods tightly in response, her utter trust tearing at him inside. He will **not** fail her.

“Go on, love – we need the repairs done.”

He nods and kisses her once more, leaving with one last glance at Keith.

His phone beeps a message before he reaches the bike. He looks down at it.

_This time only – forgotten. Never again, got it? KH_

His hands are shaking as he sends the one-word reply.

Between hardware stores, Maplins and PC World it takes him almost three hours to buy everything he needs. He gets one more text from Keith during that time – Harkness has gone out on a call to ‘landock’, which he assumes means Llandough.

Friday evening traffic means it takes him almost an hour to get back so it’s gone four in the afternoon and getting dark before he finally walks through the door of the wing. Keith opens the ward door and watches him as he approaches. He speaks just as Ianto gets close, his voice flat.

“You get everything we need?”

“Yes. What happened with Llandough?” At the blank look on Keith’s face he clarifies.

“Where Harkness went.”

Keith steps back, into the ward, and Ianto follows him. Lisa is lying in the unit, her eye closed as the respirator hisses.

“No idea. It wasn’t one of the those Rift-surge thingys, just all of a sudden about an hour after you left this Yank was on the comm…”

“That would be Harkness.”

“Yeah – you never said he was American. Anyway, he was saying he was nearly at the call and was asking for information. This woman, think he called her Tish…”

“Tosh. Toshiko Sato.”

“Tosh. Anyway, she told him that L..L…” He shrugs, clearly giving up. “That bit of Cardiff has a bit of a history with Rift flares and reports of ghosts, so according to her it could be some of ‘disturbance’. That was all she said – it seemed to mean something to Harkness.”

Ianto nods. The call must have come in via the phones – he hasn’t yet figured out just how Torchwood get to hear about most of their cases, although obviously the police must hand over some of their own weird-and-wacky calls. He’s read enough of Torchwood’s files to know that there are a wide range of theories for those ‘ghosts’ that can’t be explained away as indigestion/imagination/faulty wiring. At least two of those explanations involve Rift energy. However Torchwood got whatever call has pulled Harkness from the Hub once more, and whatever it turns out to be, at this moment the repairs to the unit are the more important issue.

The ward’s windows open only onto an internal courtyard, so they’ve put up some arclights, one of which is already on. He snaps the rest on to flood half the room with light and places his purchases on the table just as the intercept crackles into life once more.

-“Owen!”- There is a snap to Harkness’s voice. -“Wanna tell me why I found myself without Retcon this afternoon?”-

-“Wha? Why’s that anything to do with me? Why’d you need any bloody Retcon anyway?”-

-“As it happens, I didn’t. Hilda Robbins was a sweet old thing who was somewhat relieved when I brought out the squirrel that was hiding in her attic and she realised there wasn’t a ghost after all, despite her phone call to the police. She gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit and I left her convinced I was representing a Psychic Research Group. But that’s not the point. I got there and went to check the supplies and found the Retcon was out. Care to tell me why?”-

-“Ah…..Well, you know, Jack, I’m a doctor not a bloody nurse – shouldn’t be my job to check the supplies.”- To Ianto’s ears, Harper sounds like a sulky schoolchild trying to justify not having done his homework. From the irritation in Harkness’s voice, this isn’t the first time Harper has used this excuse.

-“Yeah, yeah I know – it’s not your job to check supplies, it’s not Tosh’s job to look after the Archives, it’s not Suzie’s job to maintain the databases. And God knows it’s no-one’s job to clean the place. But you know what – someone’s gotta do it, Owen. Now…”-

Whatever Harkness was going to say next is lost as the Rift Activity Locator next to Ianto beeps softly and in the background of the intercept he hears a faint alarm.

-“Rift flare?”- Harkness asks sharply.

-“Hang on, Jack.”- It’s Sato’s voice now, and after a moment of silence she comes back onto the comm. -“Yes, a flare five miles north of Cardiff, right on top of Caerwen Reservoir. And…hold on…”- There is another pause, slightly longer and then: -“Jack, a motorist just put in a call to the police – thinks he saw a car go into the water.”-

-“Oh great! Civilians. Let me guess – ambulance and fire on their way?”-

-“Mmm-umm.”-

-“Owen, get your ass into the other car and meet me there - and bring some Retcon with you. Might be this was nothing other than a surge of energy that startled some poor sap into the reservoir but it might be a situation, in which case it’s a round of Retcon for all.”-

-“Oh c’mon Jack, why don’t you just swing by the Hub?”-

-“Owen.”- It’s all Harkness says, but the warning note is obvious. Clearly, Harkness has his lines and Harper is on the verge of crossing one. Ianto wonders what would happen if Harper pushed his boss any further. Remembering the hard muscle under his hand that morning and the way Harkness had carried that Weevil away, he flinches at the thought of pushing Harkness’s patience any further himself.

-“Yeah, yeah. See you there.”-

“Who’s the Londoner?” Keith asks as the intercept goes silent.

“The medic. Owen Harper.” Ianto answers without really being aware of it as he moves across to the coffee maker and starts it up.

“Coffee? She needs the unit up to spec as fast as possible and you’re stopping for a drink?” Keith glares at him but Ianto glowers right back.

“My head feels like it’s splitting, ok? Caffeine withdrawal is not going to make me do this job any faster, so shut up and let me get on with it.”

After a moment’s grumbling Keith starts the kettle boiling and, to his credit, joins Ianto in the job as soon as they both have a drink in their hands.

It’s not heavy work but it is intricate – first cannibalising the shop-bought mother-boards and circuit boards, then building the circuit boards for the unit. The wiring needed for the unit is thicker than the wires Ianto has had to buy so they have to solder several together to replace each one and then wrap the result in plastic and seal them. The thin steel plating needs to be measured and cut to exactly the right dimensions to create the strips, and there are dozens of them needed. It’s nearly 9 before everything is ready.

Ianto straightens, stretching stiff muscles and trying to roll his shoulders, hissing with pain. He puts his hands to the back of his neck, trying to rub away some of the tension.

“Give me a second and I’ll put it all back.” Moving his head slowly from side to side he glances across at Lisa. The pain is etched into her face, even with the drugs, and for a moment he wants to scream about the unfairness of it all. Letting his hands drop to his side, he takes one deep breath and then steps back to the table, intending to gather up the replacement elements and start the next long job.

Just then the intercept buzzes once more and Harkness’s voice rings out.

-“Tosh, Suzie!”-

-“Here, Jack.”- It’s Sato once more and Ianto wonders briefly if Costello ever takes the comms. -“What happened? What came through?”-

-“Some sort of automated craft, I think.” He sounds weary. –“Hit the edge of the reservoir. The motorist who called 999 is fine, but the paramedics who thought they were dealing with a car crash…”- he sighs. -“One got hit by something the survivor is describing as a fine mist coming from somewhere inside the craft. We’re not sure what it was - she can’t be any clearer and the motorist didn’t see anything at all.”-

-“Do you think it was an attack?”-

-“Don’t know. It might be some sort of probe with a few basic in-built defences, it might be some kind of battle robot. No life signs on board and we didn’t want to keep it out in the open while we tried to figure out how to crack it. Owen’s bringing it and the body back to the Hub so you and he can start work. I’ll come back after doing a clean-up…”-

Ianto doesn’t hear the rest of whatever Harkness says. The word ‘clean-up’ brings his head snapping round to look at the intercept even as he starts to swear in a soft stream of Welsh. Keith stares at him.

“What?”

“That fucking pteranodon!”

“Eh?”

Ianto looks over impatiently before he remembers that he hasn’t actually mentioned the incident to Keith. “Earlier, there was a Rift flare the other side of the warehouses. I couldn’t risk the team coming here, so I went out to find out what it was.”

“A pteranodon.” Keith’s voice is flat, skeptical. There are moments when Ianto is frankly unsure if the other man has actually taken in what the Rift is and what it

does, but it doesn’t exactly matter right now.

“Yes. I got it into a warehouse and locked it in, dumped a piece of tech from London in its place. **Shit** , I forgot about it.”

“You forgot about a pteranodon.”

“Had a few other things on my mind,” Ianto answers tersely.

“So what are you planning on doing with it?”

Ianto rubs both hands across his face, trying to think. Sooner or later, the creature will either get out or raise enough of a fuss that someone will hear and go in.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking that far ahead at the time.” He stands for a moment, trying to get his brain to work. Trying to think a way through the growing list of everything that needs to be done. He has to get the unit repaired; has to deal with the pteranodon before anyone finds it; has to work on Harkness; has to get into the Hub; has to repair the internal circuit boards. Has to save Lisa.

 _First things first._ He turns his attention to the repair job, pushing everything else (Harkness, pteranodons and the Hub) to the back of his mind.

It takes till gone midnight, but eventually he has the whole system back inside the respirator. He glances up and meets Keith’s eyes for a moment, then reaches out to the small switch set just inside the open panel. He snaps it across and for a moment, there is no change. Then the pitch of the respirator drops by an octave and suddenly Lisa’s breathing sounds just that little bit less forced, less strained. For a moment, kneeling beside the unit, Ianto sags with relief and bows his head. _Thank God._

He shuts the panel and forces himself to his feet, using the unit to help pull himself up. She’s breathing all right for the moment, but he can’t get her earlier words out of his mind. Even now the unit is only functioning at 75% efficiency, and if today’s crisis does mean the gold and platinum elements will become more damaged, that doesn’t give him much grace in which to replace them. He’s avoided a disaster, but he’s no closer to healing her.

Keith walks past him to the tiny ice-box and microwave. “You hungry?”

Ianto just shakes his head. He tries to remember the last time he actually ate a proper meal, but gives up after a moment.

“Coffee.” He and Keith stand almost side-by-side as he makes more coffee and Keith warms through another frozen meal. Ianto takes the mug and sits in the metal chair, staring sightlessly at the read-outs for the unit, only dimly aware of Keith coming closer and sitting on the edge of the camp bed with his meal. She will wake up soon, and then the drugs will wear off and there will be the hours of watching the clock and seeing her stress levels rise until its time for the next dose. This is her life now – pain, an easing of it, blackness and then rising pain once more. If he can buy her release from that, then it doesn’t matter what it costs him.

 _What the hell am I going to do about that bleeding dinosaur? All very well while it’s trapped in the warehouse, but sooner or later it’s going to…_

_Trap. It’s trapped. A trap. Bait. Lure…get him to see the bait. And then...he hates London. If I can make him feel superior…_

For the third time that day the Rift Activity Locator alarm sounds, breaking into his thoughts just as an idea is trying to form. He comes rapidly to his feet, collecting the locator and pulling up the details. Just as he does, the intercept crackles once more and a moment later, voices sound.

-“Jack?”- Sato again. She seems to work almost as hard as Harkness, and certainly harder than Harper. The doctor seems to always be the first to leave, with Costello sometimes leaving with him, sometimes leaving hours afterwards, but Sato invariably leaves even later. Of course, that could just mean she’s having an affair with Harkness but her behaviour towards him in public certainly doesn’t imply that. She obviously admires him but Ianto’s seen no sign of anything sexual between them. Harper and Costello, on the other hand…

-“My wonderful Tosh! What is it – Owen not back yet?”- It would appear that Harkness is back to his usual flippant self.

-“Hmm? Oh yes, he’s just back. No, we’ve had another flare.”-

-“I’ll check it out. Send the location over. Anything else?”-

-“Yes.”- It’s Costello’s voice, to Ianto’s slight surprise.

-“Suzie? What’s up?”-

-“I’ve been looking at that pod Owen brought in tonight and I’m not sure it’s complete.”-

-“Sorry?”-

-“Well, there looked to be some damage around one side of it so I had a closer look. Did some scans. You saw it had one end more rounded than the other?”-

-“Uh-huh?”- Harkness sounds slightly impatient.

-“Jack, I think it broke up when it came through the Rift. I think some sort of repair system sealed one part of it, but if that’s the case, then the other part may have come through as well.”-

-“Well, there wasn’t anything else anywhere near that sodding reservoir, that I do know. We checked.”- It’s Harper, sounding dismissive.

-“Yes, Owen, I know that,”- Costello snaps. -“But if it’s not by the reservoir, then…”-

-“It might be **in** the reservoir,”- Harkness finishes. -“You sure about this Suzie?”-

-“Not totally, no. But if I’m right…”-

-“We don’t want to leave any part of an alien craft in that reservoir. I get you.- There’s a pause and then Harkness speaks again, his tone decisive. –“Tosh?”-

-“Jack?”-

-“Can you run an initial scan on those hieroglyphics, try and find if there’s a logical pattern? Might help establish if the craft is complete. I’ve got the location of the Rift flare – I’ll check it out. Later, guys”-

 _He’s alone again. Grab the chance._ “Look after her,” he snaps out. Keith looks over at him.

“You going to try and talk to Harkness?”

“You might say that.”

He snatches up the intercept and heads out of the ward.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ianto over-hears conversations, and finds a way in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any dialogue you recognise comes from "Fragments".

Ianto walks straight to the bathroom and starts pulling the dark blue suit from the bag. Blue suit, white shirt, matching tie. It’s one of the cheaper ones – he brought four from the flat altogether but the two decent ones have been sold because although one had been a birthday present off Lisa, the money was more important than the suit. Reluctantly, he takes off the necklace and places it carefully back in the suitcase and then transfers wallet and stopwatch to his hip pockets. It’s clear from their first two meetings that by himself, he’s not enough to override the Captain’s disdain for London. But with a second lure to dangle in front of Harkness’s face, so to speak, he might actually be able to make use of that hatred.

He stares at his reflection in the small mirror. It was only at Torchwood that he started wearing a suit, and even then only when he was transferred out of the field. It was a disguise, in those first few weeks at Research. A disguise that allowed him to blend in, to disappear. To hide. When everyone was looking at him out of the corner of their eye, when everyone was muttering about Team Seventeen and Incident 456.89/TY.B05 - it helped. Dressed like everyone else, he could try and pretend he was **like** everyone else. He could fade into the background, hide behind the outfit, and imagine the past had never happened. And now – now he’s going to play the London suit and hopefully goad Harkness into playing the Cardiff rogue. Let the Captain show off a little. Let him prove to Ianto how much better Cardiff is and perhaps the man will condescend to take in a stray. Especially if he continues to let Harkness know just what is on offer.

_#Whore#,_ Oliver’s voice hisses. # _Just a…#_

_You’re dead, Oliver._ He cuts across the voice in a way that would have got him beaten black and blue if he’d tried it in life. _You’re dead. Now fucking well **be** dead, and leave me the hell alone._ He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, then opens his eyes. He knows exactly what he is, and it no longer matters.

He slips the comm. intercept into one inner pocket and the locator into another before picking up the energy scanner, then heads out of the hospital without looking back into the ward. He heads for the van, not willing to risk the bike while wearing the suit. As he reaches it, the intercept cuts into life and he hears Sato’s voice. While he listens, he wires the intercept into the van’s hands-free kit – a Torchwood model kit, nicked from a Torchwood van that he left in the tower’s garage for fear of being tracked through the licence-plate.

-“Jack?”-

-“Tosh! What do you have for me?”-

-“Well, the database pulled up a 95% match to a case from the 1930s- there’s not a lot of information on the electronic files, I'm afraid”-

He pulls out onto the road, still listening intently.

-“Well? Come on Tosh, talk to me!”-

-“The hieroglyphics match something found in an archaeological dig, it was flagged as an attack craft but that’s all the electronic files have. Suzie’s down in the Archives now trying to find the paper file but, Jack – you know how bad the Archives are…”-

-“Time and place, Tosh – time and place. Just pull together everything you can find."-

-“Will do.”-

The comms go dead. _Well, that was interesting._ His stalking of the team has given him some insight into how they operate as a team, how they interact with each other but he’s rarely been able to get close enough to hear them talk and when he has got that close they are, of course, in public and so watching their words. This is the first time he’s had any information on how things run inside the Hub itself.

A sparse electronic file; Costello ‘trying’ to find the paper file and ‘you know how bad the Archives are…’. In London, the electronic databases were so huge that there was an entire database OF databases – you searched there on your general terms of reference to find which specific database you needed to call up to find the information you actually needed. There were Junior Archivists whose entire job was making sure the database entries were up to spec so that anyone who needed information could find it. Vast swathes of data available at a few key-strokes, with how much of what Torchwood held any one person could see depending partly on their security rating. And after any field assignment, each (surviving) agent entered any and every bit of new information into the databases. _Mr Jones, anything you can give us will help prevent another tragedy._ Becca and Will, Maggie and Saff, all lying in drawers in the morgue and he’ll never understand why he was the one to make it out alive. He’d never realised before the real meaning of the term ‘dead weight’. But the door into his memories has been opening too much already today, and he doesn’t have time for this right now. So he shoves it closed, slamming a bar across it to stop it creaking open again. He wonders briefly just how much longer that door is going to hold.

The Rift surge is a couple of miles from where they are, and he’s not sure how far away Harkness is, so he sticks right to the speed limit and makes one brief stop on the way for the necessary supplies. When he gets to the site he pulls up behind an abandoned church before getting out and turning on the scanner. It doesn’t take long to find what came through the Rift: a paperbacked sized creature that rather resembles an armadillo. It’s dead, though whether because of damage done by the Rift or because it found itself in an environment that was toxic to its species, he has no clue. He leaves it where he found it and gets back into the van, sitting and listening to the soft static of the intercept while watching for the SUV.

They brought her up from London in this van. The unit took up almost every inch of space in the back – their things went next to whoever was driving, with the other man riding the bike. It’s hardly been touched in the eight weeks since, but it will come in handy to get her into the Hub. After that, his plan is set. Retcon Keith and drop him and the bike up in the valleys. Leave Keith at the roadside with the suggestion of a few weeks spent wandering the country trying to get over Lisa’s death and a dim ‘memory’ of getting hammered. Then take the van somewhere else, Swansea probably, and leave it standing unlocked, keys obvious. With Swansea’s reputation, odds are it’ll get nicked before he’s back in Cardiff. Keith will take himself home to London and the Halletts will curse the memory of Ianto Jones, who didn’t even have the guts to keep in touch with his girlfriend’s family.

His thoughts return to Costello ‘trying’ to find the paper file, and Sato’s comment about the Archives. At the Tower, the paper files were kept in the same meticulous order as the electronic files. Everything labelled, tagged, flagged and cross-referenced. Anything physical that could not be uploaded was catalogued in every possible way – by size; shape; weight; colour; density; material (if known); source (ditto); date/place of discovery; known/presumed function; toxin/danger level… on and on. Discovering and cataloguing all of that had been part of his own job. Clearly, the Hub’s records are not kept up to the same standard. Is that another way in? Surely Harkness must realise his team would be safer if they could access all their information?

The intercept sputters into life once more and he sits up, listening.

-“Jack – Suzie found the file, but….”-

-“But??”-

-“Well, for a start although the paper file seems incomplete it does give full measurements for the craft found – only it seems to have been around twice the length of the one tonight. The archaeological dig that found it was up in the Beacons in the 1940s, but the craft was found alongside items that dated to the 15th century. Apparently, there were local legends that seem to go back about that far concerning a village disappearing after ‘strange lights in the sky’.”-

-“Okay….”- Harkness says, clearly trying to get Sato to get to the point.

-“The file says there were ‘signs’ of chemical weapons and gives a list of chemicals, but there’s no reference to what the signs were, or if the listed chemicals were weaponised or found within the craft. There’s an oblique reference to an ‘incident’ at the site, and to ‘the Minister’ needing to be informed, but that’s as far as that goes. There’s not even a reference to what happened to the craft – it simply refers me to the Secure Archives. If you want us to look there for more information, or to try and find out where the 1940s craft is so we can do a real comparison, we’ll need the passcodes for the Secure Archives.”-

Ianto shifts slightly in his seat, suddenly apprehensive. In London, of course, access to the Secure Archives was heavily restricted – and even when access was granted, it was limited. He’d needed to go in once, and his team leader couldn’t grant him the access himself. There’d been one armed guard at the main door, one at each sub-level and he’d been informed he’d be watched by CCTV the entire way there and back. And that was on top of the pat-down search and the X-ray scan on entry and exit. All for one file containing 2 sheets of A4 and three photographs. Though given what they showed…..

He’d hoped it was different here - that with the team being so small, there’d be less stringent internal security but it sounds like he was wrong. _Damn._

-“So what you’re telling me is that this thing that came through the Rift today might be a match for something we have in the Archives?”- Unless Ianto is missing his guess, Harkness has just avoided making an outright refusal to give Sato that code.

-“Yes.”- Sato doesn’t sound the least bit surprised at that avoidance. Ianto gnaws on his lower lip for a second. That could be a problem – he needs access to everything in the Hub. If each team member is restricted in some way in what they are allowed to do or use within the Hub…..

-“We’ll discuss it when I get back.” Harkness says. –“I’m nearly at the location.” Ianto removes the intercept from the hands-free kit and climbs from the van into the steady rain, moving down to the main road. His heart is pounding, and he can feel cold sweat sliding down his spine. If this roll of the dice fails, he has no idea what else he can try. He’s already tried outright begging. 

It’s nearly one in the morning by now and the road seems empty, but a moment or so later he sees lights in the distance just as Harkness’s voice comes over the intercept once again, rapping out orders to each of the team in the tone of a man checking items from a mental ‘to do’ list.

-“Toshiko, see if you can decode those hieroglyphics.”-

-“Already on it.”-

-“Owen, take a cross section of the paramedic's brain, check it against the list of chemical agents.”-

-“Will do.”- The lights are getting closer now and through the hiss of the rain he can hear the now-familiar sound of the SUV’s engine.

-“Suzie, we're going to need to dredge the reservoir. See if you can find the other half…”-

As he steps out into the beam of the headlights he slips the intercept into his pocket. A screech of brakes sounds as Harkness brings the car to a halt just a few feet from him. For just a second, he regrets that the man’s reactions are so good. Then he curses himself for his cowardice. Lisa is still fighting – he has no right to want to give up.

There’s a moment’s pause, and although he can’t see past the headlights, he assumes Harkness is taking in exactly who it is standing in the road because the door is thrown open and Harkness launches himself out of the car, slamming the door with a vengance. As he comes marching towards Ianto, his face becomes discernable. To say he’s pissed off would be an understatement, and for a moment Ianto’s breath seems to catch in his chest. He knows what used to happen when Oliver came home that livid and the recollection has him almost ready to run, adreneline surging through him. But he holds himself still, makes himself remain in place. He won’t let the past control him. He almost let that happen earlier and she can’t afford for him to go to pieces again now.

“OK, this has to stop.” Harkness sounds one step away from threatening, as though he’s preparing for a ‘this is your last chance’ conversation. Clearly, he is in no mood to listen to a reasoned explanation as to why Ianto is flagging down the head of Torchwood Cardiff. _So…._

“No, listen to me….” Not that he expects Harkness to, but the man clearly feels a need to rant, and unless the venting goes from verbal to physical, Ianto may as well let him get it all out, as it were. No point in actually trying to say anything worth listening to until Harkness has finished. Then he can bring out the pièce de résistance of the pteranodon.

“I don't have time for this. Look, I don't care what your problem is - I want you out of this city by sunrise. There is no place for you here. Go back to London, find yourself another life. Keep stalking me, I'll wipe your memory.” At any other time, the arrogance and callousness displayed in those few words would have raised Ianto’s hackles – being told to leave his home city and return to the place he’s fled is bad enough, but for Harkness, who had offered his token sorrow for Lisa just hours earlier, to tell him to ‘find another life’ speaks volumes about the Captain. _Heartless fucking bastard._ But just now, he needs to get Harkness exactly where he wants him.

“No, but the thing is...” A gentle prod, a deliberate meaningless phrase and Harkness draws breath and continues to snarl.

“Any conversation between us, no matter what the subject, is over! Finished! Done! Forever! I'm getting back behind the wheel of that car and if you're still standing in the road, I'm going to drive through you.” And, having apparently finally completed his little tantrum, Harkness turns round and starts to stalk away. And Ianto plays the card he knows Harkness, as the defender of ‘this city’ and the superior to London he clearly sees himself as, cannot possibly ignore.

“You're not gonna help me catch this pterodactyl then?” His wording is deliberate. Makes it clear that, despite the fact he’s just been ordered from the city, he has no intention of leaving when there is work to do. Makes it clear that this Torchwood One upstart will deal with the issue regardless of what Captain Jack Harkness wants. Makes it clear that, whatever Harkness may think about him, he **is** still Torchwood. All to lure Harkness in.

Harkness stops in his tracks, spins on the spot and stares straight at him.

“What?”

“A pterodactyl,” Ianto repeats calmly. “It’s not going anywhere just yet, but it might cause a bit of a fuss when it starts trying to break out.”

Harkness strides back towards him, and for the first time it is the Captain who breaks the boundaries of personal space, closing in until he is scant inches from the Welshman. They are, he realises with a spark of surprise, the same height. Something about Harkness’s attitude makes him seem so intensely ‘there’ that Ianto had assumed the other man was not only broader and heavier-set but also taller. He meets the angry gaze.

“Starts trying to break out from where?”

“I can give you precise directions on the way.” Ianto nods to the SUV still standing, engine running and wipers going. Harkness glares at him.

“Or you could just tell me right now and have done with it.”

He shakes his head wordlessly and Harkness steps even closer, so close now that Ianto can see the anger snapping in the blue eyes. “Listen to me, Ianto Jones, I don’t have…”

Ianto takes a gamble and cuts him off – something that doesn’t happen very often to the great Captain Harkness, from the look of shock on his face.

“Time for this. Yes, you said. So shall we get on? Go pterodactyl hunting?” He tries to keep his face calm, waiting to judge the other man’s reaction.

“Together?” The shock is fading from the other man’s face and the anger is leaching away too. Ianto smiles, and even though Harkness is now far closer than social niceties deem men may be to each other, he pointedly does not step back. He keeps his voice quiet and low and matter-of-fact.

“Do you have a problem with us being… together, Captain?” It is, he realises suddenly, the first time he’s actually called Harkness anything and it’s impossible to miss the sudden spark of interest in the other’s gaze. Although he put no particular emphasis on any word, the tiny pause before ‘together’ coupled with what he’s read of Harkness’s habits should mean the man reads into his words exactly what Ianto intends him to read.

Harkness draws breath to answer and then his focus suddenly shifts to what appears to be Ianto’s shoulder. It’s only when the other man reaches a hand to his own ear that Ianto realises someone from the Hub has spoken over the earpiece. He steps back smoothly, returning them to a more socially acceptable distance and puts his hands in his pockets, watching silently. One hand grips the stopwatch tightly and the other traces the outline of the medallion through the leather wallet.

“Tosh?” Harkness nods, as one is wont to do even when on the phone. Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out what is clearly, from its close resemblance to the device currently in Ianto’s inner jacket pocket, a Meson Energy Scanner. “Yes, I’m on-site. I…” Suddenly, his head turns and he stares thoughtfully at Ianto. Then he seems to return his attention to the earpiece.

“Hang on…” As the small Rift-visitor is just a few metres away, it doesn’t take long for Harkness to find it. Ianto stays where he is, watching as Harkness yanks a torch from somewhere inside his coat and shines it onto the creature before checking the scanner. He shoves both torch and scanner back into his pockets before picking up the dead animal. He looks it over and sighs before tapping the earpiece again, which appears to restore his connection to the Hub.

“A Dekelorian. Semi-intelligent little things, but they need an atmosphere far higher in oxygen than Earth. It basically suffocated within a few minutes of coming through. Damn, I hate it when that happens.” Whatever Sato has to say, Ianto doesn’t hear, but Harkness shakes his head. “Nah, no danger. We can just file a report for the Archives.” There is a momentary pause and Harkness turns and starts to walk back toward where Ianto is still standing, the coat flaring and billowing around him. “Tosh, listen. I’m not coming straight back. No, it’s fine, just….” He meets Ianto’s gaze. “Something came up. I’ll check in later.”

His hand drops from the earpiece and he marches back up the pavement, passing Ianto with no reaction other than a swift sideways jerk of his head. Assuming this to be a signal, Ianto follows him calmly to the SUV. Harkness walks around the front to the driver’s side and gets in and Ianto silently climbs in on the passenger side. Harkness reaches behind them and dumps the little body onto the backseat before shoving the car into gear and accelerating sharply enough that Ianto is pushed back against the seat. He still says nothing, just reaches up and puts the seatbelt on. The ‘click’ as it snaps home sounds loud in the SUV and Harkness looks across at him, smirking.

“Worried about my driving, Ianto Jones?”

“It’s not the driving that worries me, Captain Harkness. It’s the risk of a rather sudden stop.”

There is a soft breath of laugher from beside him. This is going worlds better than it did earlier and Harkness is clearly enjoying Ianto’s responses. Which doesn’t change the fact that his hands, as he clasps them together, are damp with nervous sweat. He keeps them off his lap to avoid marking the suit.

“So – directions?”

Ianto gives the directions precisly, quietly, annoucing each turn or change of lane as it becomes important. He knows exactly where he’s going and what he’s doing.

It doesn’t take long before the ramshackle maze of warehouses comes into view on the right. He makes sure he doesn’t look left, to the field where the Rift incursion was earlier in the day, just directs Harkness with a few more words to the warehouse where he caged the dinosaur hours earlier. The fact that he is actually bringing Harkness to within a mile of Lisa’s hiding place makes his heart hammer against the walls of his chest but if this works, the Captain will be even closer to her so…

Harkness stops the SUV near a fire exit door that is far too small for the creature to get through even if it was wide open before turning in his seat to consider Ianto. The frown makes Ianto nervous so he indicates the warehouse with one finger.

“It’s in there, Captain.”

Harkness hesitates for a moment then gets out of the car, Ianto a step behind. The Captain goes to the boot and yanks it open, removing a small black case, then strips off the greatcoat, dumping it in the empty compartment. Disengaging the lock, Harkness opens the case to reveal the makings of a large hypodermic. Ianto watches as the other man starts piecing it together.

“OK, **that** is the only special equipment you've got?” He can hear the disbelief in his own voice, but he’s seen this creature and he’s not really sure quite where or how Harkness thinks he’s going to inject the brute. Harkness glances across at him, looking as though he can’t see Ianto’s point.

“Yeah, cos I keep dinosaur nets in the back of the SUV.” There is more than a touch of sarcasm to his voice and Ianto gives a faint shrug and lets an almost sullen tone enter his own tone in response. The point of this is to let Harkness feel superior, after all.

“Torchwood London would've.” Well, it’s almost true – Weevil nets were standard issue. Harkness glares at him at the mention of London and Ianto smirks inwardly. Harkness, it would seem, is the kind of man who can’t resist butting antlers.

The older man heads for the nearest door and Ianto follows, wondering briefly what exactly Harkness is planning. There is a moment of silence as the Captain reaches out to the door and Ianto just has time to realise that planning might not actually be the other’s strong point when Harkness throws open the barrier and charges through it. Ianto follows right alongside, ignoring the part of him that is shouting about how foolhardy the action is – after all, the whole idea of this little escapade is to allow Harkness to call the shots and be, as he thinks, in charge. But neither of them exactly banked on the pterodactyl spotting them so soon and it swoops straight for them, long clawed legs sweeping over the floor and beak open wide.

“Nope.” Without thinking, Ianto grabs the other man by the shoulder and they both stumble backward through the door again, the Welshman yanking it shut just before the creature hits it with a thump.

They stand side by side, shoulders almost touching, leaning on the door. Ianto takes a deep breath and realises that there is that smell again; that mix of wool, leather and cinnamon, and overlaying them all, the scent he can’t put a finger to. There’s something intoxicating about the combination and standing here, close enough to Harkness to feel the man’s bodyheat and with adrenalin flooding through him, the smell is enough to make his mouth go dry and start the first tendrils of arousal fluttering under his skin.

There is a clear note of excitement in Harkness’s voice when he speaks. “How did you find it?”

_Eh? Oh! Well, let’s go with a little honesty, shall we?_ _‘I just happened to stumble across it earlier’ really isn’t going to fly._ “Rift activity locator.”

Harkness nods briefly and throws him a quick glance. “Torchwood London.” There is a very faint question hidden in there and Ianto gives one nod in answer. They both know the only way a junior researcher would have something like that is by theft.

“See, quality kit.” He plays again on the man’s pride, reminding him London has the toys – but Cardiff now has the chance to bag the prize.

“Yeah.” Harkness turns slightly back towards the door they are both leaning on. “It's quite excitable.”

“Must be your aftershave.” It’s intended as a line, a quick joke akin to the comment he’d offered on the other’s driving. Harkness’s answer is almost absent minded.

“Never wear any.”

“You smell like that naturally?” The words slip out, but they don’t exactly do his cause any harm. He throws a quick glance at the other man and sees the hint of a smirk. Hardly surprising – it’s not exactly a normal conversational snippet, especially between men. But it will work to keep Harkness thinking about Ianto along certain lines. Ensure that, once in the Hub, ‘Ianto Jones’ is in the Captain’s mental files under one category it becomes unlikely to occur to the man that he could be anything else.

“Fifty-first century pheromones.” Ianto blinks and starts to look at the other man. _What the…_ Harkness grins briefly. “You people have no idea. Ready for another go?”

Putting that right beside disappearing Weevil bites in his own mental “Harkness File”, Ianto shrugs and nods. “I'm game if you are.”

“Three, two, one...” Harkness throws the door open once more and they race back through, Harkness slamming it shut behind them. Up above, the pterodactyl shrieks and dives down towards the two men.

“Split up!” Harkness shouts, and Ianto complies without thinking, racing away from Harkness as fast as he can in shoes that threaten to slip on the smooth floor. He hears a wild yell and realises with some surprise it came from himself. The tension of the last few hours, the stress of the long day with all its memories and alarms seems to find some small measure of release in the sudden motion and noise.

They reach each other on the far side of the floor moments after the dinosaur lands right near the door, cutting off their only exit. Harkness shoots a hand out and grabs Ianto’s arm, drawing him along as he steps forward slowly and that is very promising. The Captain is grinning and he stares straight at the creature as it stands on the floor, flexing its wings.

“We're not gonna harm you.” He’s talking to the pterodactyl, of all things. There is reassurance in his voice along with excitement and anticipation. “You can't stay here. Come back with me. I've got somewhere nice and big where you can fly around.”

“OK, so you'll let the pterodactyl in and not me.” Ianto doesn’t have to look very hard to find the slight snap he puts into his voice. He wants Harkness in a good mood, wants the man to feel extravagant, gracious. Wants to make him feel that Cardiff has the better of London, especially since the whole objective is to get Harkness to the point where he will condescend to say ‘yes’. But even so, the fact that Harkness will take in a flying dinosaur without batting an eyelid while Ianto is ignored, rankles.

“We need a guard dog,” Harkness says, but there just the tiniest defensive note in his voice and Ianto grabs onto it. He talks on, letting it sound like he’s almost rambling. It’s obvious from what he overheard earlier that work goes undone in the Hub because no-one wants it as their job, but he doesn’t risk talking about any of it specifically. He doesn’t want to be the one to mention the idea of the Archives or the database - too high a risk of awakening the other’s disdain for all things London. Not to mention the risk of making Harkness wonder why he wants access to those secrets. _Go for the nitty-gritty instead._

“I can be that.” His voice is a harsh, eager whisper. “Like a receptionist. Building maintenance, food and drink, dry cleaning even. That coat of yours must take a battering. Like a butler, I could be a butler.” And dear God, but the stress must be getting to him because that last wasn’t half crap.

“We don't need a butler.” Harkness sounds too ready to dismiss the whole vague idea as he moves forward and Ianto reaches out and grabs his arm, jabbing a finger in the direction of the coat, having realised why his subconscious shoved the last idea forward.

“Excuse me, dried egg on your collar.”

“It was a busy week.” But the defensive note is back. The seed’s been planted but nothing’s going to come of it if everything else goes to hell, so Ianto changes the subject, yanking Harkness back slightly to hiss at him. They’re both automatically keeping their voices low and so far, the dinosaur is just standing there, watching them.

“What exactly is your plan?” Once again, Harkness shows a clear dislike for others getting close to him as he yanks his arm free. The sudden move makes the pterodactyl flare its wings out before it screeches again.

“I'm going to be the decoy,” Harkness says calmly.

_Oh for God’s sake, I’ve heard of showing off, but…_ “And it will rip you to shreds,” Ianto says. He’s trying not to sound as though he’s speaking to a child, but if Harkness can’t see the risk….

“Dinosaurs?” Harkness grins, sounds dismissive. “Had 'em for breakfast. Had to, only source of pre-killed food protein after the asteroid crashed.” Ianto starts to look at him, now becoming convinced that every word out of Harkness’s mouth needs to be examined for any remaining signs of sanity, but Harkness is continuing to speak.

“Long story. Here you go.” He shoves the syringe into Ianto’s hands and Ianto stares at it, wondering whether Harkness is attempting to compensate for something.

“One injection to the central nervous cortex. I'll keep it occupied.” Harkness taps his fist against Ianto’s chest, clearly feeling the need to make sure neither of them forget who (he thinks) is in charge. “Move.”

“No.” The word is rather more abrupt than Ianto intended, but the plan is so ludicrous that it’s out before he can think of a better way of phrasing it. Damn it, he **has** to stop letting Harkness unsettle him; has to stop opening his mouth before he’s thought things through. Trying to avoid Oliver’s beatings taught him to think over every word and gesture before he spoke or moved, but it’s a lesson he seems to have forgotten lately. It’s one he'd better relearn fast or he’ll be sentencing both Lisa and himself to death. _Think first, **then** speak._

“What?” Fortunately, Harkness seems more startled than angered by Ianto’s refusal. He looks at his accomplice, actually focusing on Ianto for the first time since they entered the warehouse. Ianto grabs the chance and hands the syringe back.

“It knows me.” _Well, it’s seen me before. Does that count?_ “I'll be a better decoy.”

“No, way too dangerous.” The refusal, the single phrase, is enough to make Ianto want to sag in relief. He remembers that tone from when he was in the field with Becca and the rest. Right now, Harkness has forgotten all about London and Cardiff. He’s operating and thinking as though they are a team. He’s seeing Ianto as a member of his team - which means someone he has authority over and thus responsibility for. And once he has started to think of Ianto like that, it will be difficult to switch off and return to the standpoint of ordering the interloper to leave. _This is working. Oh God, please let this keep working._

The job itself, the job the team has formed for, still needs to be done and he has an advantage Harkness doesn’t.

“No, I've got a secret weapon. Chocolate.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the bar he bought earlier, hefting it so the Captain can see it. “Preferably dark.” He slips away without another word, leaving Harkness standing, holding the syringe and wearing an expression that is probably not too far from that on Ianto’s face over the earlier meteorite comment. Seemingly cottoning on, Harkness suddenly begins to move too, hurrying in the opposite direction.

Ianto whistles softly, getting the pteranodon’s attention. He calls out, keeping his voice soft, trying not to appear threatening.

“I got your favourite, yeah.” Beyond it, he can see Harkness stepping closer, the syringe in one hand.

Ianto gently tosses the chocolate bar onto the floor, hoping the creature remembers that he’s the one who handed out something that tasted good earlier. “It's good for your serotonin levels,” he says, still moving, still keeping the creature’s attention focused on himself and the chocolate, and away from Harkness. “If you've… got serotonin levels.” _Suppose it might not. Endorphins then?_

The dinosaur pecks at the bar and then… looking back even years later, he never does quite figure out what triggered the change - perhaps Jack made a noise, or maybe Myfanwy just picked up on the tension in the air. All he knew at the time was that standing there in the warehouse, something makes the creature turn and it sees Harkness. For a second, he sees a clear ‘ah, shit!’ expression come over Harkness’s face and then the other man runs forward, trying to get close enough and there is a rush of air and the next thing he knows, the pterodactyl is up in the air and Harkness is dangling from its clawed feet.

“Whoa!” he yelps as it soars over his head, and once again the leathery wings beat down strongly. Up above him, he can hear Harkness yelling and a brief shout of his own name. He twists on the spot, trying to keep his eyes on what’s happening as the dinosaur flies across the warehouse and back. It’s not quite clear whether it’s trying to shake Harkness off or trying to keep a hold of him but for a brief second, in the dim light he can see the Captain hanging on with one hand, the syringe gleaming in the other. Then quite suddenly Harkness is falling, dropping from at least 15 feet up towards the concrete floor and Ianto moves automatically, stepping forward and reaching up, and Harkness crashes into him with a thump that knocks them both to the ground, Ianto half on his back with Harkness on top, legs caught together.

“Sorry!” he hears Harkness gasp. Looking up, Ianto feels his eyes widen suddenly as he sees the pterodactyl start to plummet, wings clearly not co-operating. One quick shove sets them rolling to the side, over and over and the situation is so fucking **crazy** that he gives a shout of laughter that’s echoed by Harkness. There is a crash as the dinosaur lands hard on the concrete right next to them and then they’re both whooping with exhilarated laughter. The laughter stutters to a halt, and for a second, there is stillness.

Harkness’s face is just millimetes from his own. They’re on the concrete, bodies touching, their breath coming in harsh pants, Harkness now underneath with Ianto lying full-stretch on top of him and like before, it seems to Ianto that the heat rolls from the other man. They’re staring straight into each other’s eyes as their breathing slows, and once more all he can think is that Harkness is warm and real and **alive**. Once again the heat seems to flash through him and this time he can’t stop it, can’t control it and his body’s response is instant and unmistakable.

It’s not just **his** reaction – they are so close, body-to-body with Harkness fully against him and he can feel the other man’s equal response; both of them aroused and hard and oh God it’s been so long since there was anything like this, almost three years since the night Peter left and he is so cold every minute of every day and he hadn’t realised until today how much he has missed the simple act of being touched and his mouth is dry with desire and Harkness is so close that just a tiny move and their mouths would meet and he just **wants** this so much….

_No. No, no, no, nonono **noNO**._ He’s not supposed to want this: this isn’t about want, it’s about need. About what he **needs** to do, not what he wants to do. How can he want this, when she is dying by inches?

“I should go.” He has to force the words out, has to make himself move. Has to make himself draw away from the heat and the warmth and the life and the want. He forces himself to his feet because he has to go, he has to go **now** because he’s not sure how long he can resist ‘want’, not right now.

Behind him, he can hear the soft scrape as Harkness gets to his feet. Then:

_"_ Hey!” There is a beat’s pause and then Harkness continues and the words should be everything Ianto wants to hear and yet they cut like a knife. “Report for work first thing tomorrow.”

He stops for a second, turning his head to look slightly over his shoulder. He can’t see Harkness’s face, can’t tell from the words what the man is thinking. But he daren’t turn round because one look at the man and ‘want’ will be all he can think of. He gives a vague gesture of affirmation and then makes himself walk away. Then Harkness’s voice cuts through the dark once more.

“Like the suit, by the way.”

Pain twists through him and he almost stumbles, the walls blurring as tears threaten to overwhelm him. He pushes himself to walk faster, to get out of the warehouse before another word can be spoken, struggling to keep putting one foot in front of the other until he is hidden in the lee of the next building.

His control goes then, and for the second time that day he collapses to the ground. This time, he sits huddled against the side of the warehouse, arms wrapped around himself, tears of relief and misery mixing with the rain that falls in sheets around him. He should be delighted, should be estactic, should be racing back to the hospital to tell the others that they are saved, that they are in. Instead, he's grasping his head in his hands, breath coming in harsh gulps, as he tries to put himself back together. Oh God, he never bargained for this, never imagined this would happen. Caught up in the need to protect her and save her he never stopped to think. He banked on Harkness wanting him, on being able to make Harkness want him. And he thought he knew where that would go: kissing, groping, handjobs.... that he can do. And beyond that - sex is just an action, he keeps reminding himself. What, since Oliver, he has never been able to do for his own pleasure he will (he will, somehow he will even though the very thought makes him feel sick with dread) do to keep Lisa safe. Letting someone else do whatever the hell they want to him, with him, is hardly an unknown event, thanks to Oliver. And that, he’s been telling himself all these weeks, will not be betraying her. If it's to keep her safe, it's not being unfaithful; it's justifiable. But he never, never, never for a second stopped to imagine that he might feel anything in response. What he felt this morning on the Plass, he can dismiss as simply a reaction to the fact that that one touch was the first human contact he’s had in two months. To want that to continue, he can tell himself, was to be expected. But this… he never stopped to think that he might actually **want** Harkness’s touch. That he might want Harkness in return.

He’s always sworn that his sexuality would never be a reason to be unfaithful. For two years, it hasn’t been an issue - there simply was no-one else who registered in his world. Lisa was his light and his life and the centre of everything. Oh, he’s looked, both at men and women – of course he’s looked; he’s monogamous, not blind. She’s looked too, and there’s been more than one time when they’ve been together at a café or elsewhere and he’s realised that not only are they both looking, but they’re both looking at the same person. The first time, he was lucky – there was an attractive girl near the man they were both eyeing up and Lisa thought that was where his attention was. The other two times, the boy happened to be one of a couple and she’d again assumed he was looking at the girl. But looking is one thing. This…to let Harkness have this affect on him, to let himself respond like that, to want that touch – that **is** unfaithful. But if he stops this now, if after tonight he suddenly pushes Harkness away, or doesn't make good on the hints he's been giving, the man is going to get suspicious. If he’s suspicious, he might start looking at just why Ianto came after him. If he starts looking he might Lisa. If he finds Lisa.....

He told himself earlier that even if Harkness treats him like Oliver did, that he wouldn’t be trapped. The irony is that, just as he’s starting to dare hope that Harkness won’t be like that – he already **is** trapped. He’s trapped himself. He doesn’t have any choice. He’s started this, he’s entered the game, dealt himself in - literally. He has no choice but to carry on playing. To protect her, he’s going to have to betray her.

The rumble of the SUV’s engines cut through the guilt and the misery. He looks up in time to see the big black vehicle swing round the now-empty warehouse and roll away into the night. Slowly, he drags himself to his feet.

Too shaken to think clearly, he stumbles straight to the hospital and it's not until he almost staggers past the shed where the bike is sitting that he realises he’s forgotten the van. But by now he’s soaked to the skin and freezing cold so he just goes through the door of the hospital wing. The ward door snaps open within seconds and Keith is standing there.

“Where the fuck have you been? You went charging out of here without a word – she’s been waiting for bloody ages, she’s asking for you again, you…” For a moment, Ianto wonders whether he’s asleep, because this seems like a replay of last night when Keith laid into him for being late. But he’s wearing a suit, not jeans and jacket, and the memory of the warehouse is all too clear for a dream.

“We’re in,” he cuts Keith off. “Harkness gave me a job.”

He walks into the ward, past Keith who is staring at him in apparent disbelief and walks to the unit. He stands beside it, staring down at her and it takes a moment before he can put a smile on his face for her. This is the news she’s been waiting to hear for so long, but he has to force the words out.

“Lease? We’re in.”

She stares up at him and then for an instant the pain is hidden behind a delighted smile. “You did it! I knew you’d do it. I knew you would!”

“You know I always keep my promises.” His lips feel wooden. He can’t understand why she doesn’t seem to see that he has betrayed her: surely the fact is written all over his face.

She lifts a hand and brushes his arm for just a moment before the heavy metal forces her to drop it down again. “When do you start?”

“Tomorrow. Uh – today. He said…. first thing.”

“What’s the job?” And that makes him blink, trying to think of what he can say.

“General suppport. But I’m in. We’ve done it.”

She smiles again, looking up at him with a pride and trust that makes him want to curl up and die. He looks away, unable to meet her gaze, and forces his eyes to focus on the medical read-outs.

“You should be resting, love.” He frowns as the numbers on the display screens actually penetrate into his brain. “Haven’t you had your injection?”

He looks across at Keith, who glares back.

“Don’t bloody blame me, she refused a dose earlier. Wanted to wait and see if you came back.” The tone of Keith’s voice makes Ianto stare at him in disbelief and Lisa makes a small noise of protest, turning her head to look at her brother.

“I knew he’d come back Keith. Don’t talk like that! What’s got into you today? You got into a fight and now….” She sounds on the edge of the tears she can no longer shed. “Ianto?” He looks down at her and the guilt flares higher at the distress in her eyes. The pain and fear have etched lines into her face that he knows will never entirely fade away.

“I knew you’d be back,” she says. “I told him you’d be back. I know you wouldn’t run out on me.”

Ianto’s gaze snaps up to Keith, startled, and he can see something cold and unyielding in Keith’s eyes. The bruise on Keith’s mouth makes him feel sick with a mixture of guilt and fear. In his desperation to keep Lisa safe, and his actions today, has he ended up only convincing Keith that **he** is the main danger to Lisa? Is Keith trying to persuade his sister that Ianto will abandon them to save his own skin?

He looks down at Lisa again and smiles gently. “Lisa – he’s just worried. He knows I’ll protect you. From anyone.” He glances up again, a flick of his eyes, and sees Keith swallow and shift fractionally. Days. They only need days. Then he can be rid of the growing danger Keith poses.

“Ianto?” In response, he reaches out and brushes one hand over her cheek and she turns her face into the touch. “What happens next?”

“I’ll spend a couple of days scouting out the Hub, find out how everything works. Then we’ll move you in. And I’ll find what tech they have, see what we can use, what information they have that can help us.”

“Why would there be anything?” It’s Keith who asks, his tone surly. Ianto looks up.

“What?”

“Why would there be information in this Hub place that you guys didn’t have in London? Thought you said your lot had never met Cybermen before?”

“The Institute hadn’t, but the Doctor had. And according to Harkness’s file, he’s been suspected of having contact with the Doctor since before he joined Torchwood. So if the Doctor knew anything about the conversion technology, so might Harkness. And even if he doesn’t, Hartman always suspected Cardiff kept tech and information to itself. At the very least, the unit will function properly and we'll have access to medications and I can do more research.”

Keith stares at him. “Pretty bloody longshot, isn’t it? And if it’s his personal knowledge, how’re you going to get him to tell you? Can’t exactly walk up to him and start asking what he knows about conversion units can you?”

At the edge of his vision, Ianto sees Lisa flinch at her brother’s harsh tone but he waves the comment away.

“I’ll find a way.” Oh, he will. He’ll get the answers he needs out of Harkness, one way or another. Not that he can tell the Hallett siblings that. Wouldn’t exactly go down well would it? _I’ll just flirt and fuck the answers out of him if need be. Difficult? Not exactly – he’s sex on legs. Oh, didn’t I tell you? I’m bi._ Perhaps not.

To stop this conversation going any further, he smiles down at Lisa. “You need to rest, lovely. Let me give you the morphine?” She nods reluctantly and he turns to the medical kit. After he’s injected her, he sits next to her until she drifts off into her drugged slumber. Then he looks up at Keith.

“You don’t leave here. I need to go to the Hub in…” He looks at his watch. “An hour. You **don’t** leave here. And don’t try convincing her I’m about to turn her in.” He looks up and gives Keith a bleak smile. “She worked for Torchwood as well. Trust me when I say she won’t believe you.” Keith’s eyes slide away from his and his mouth twists but he doesn’t say anything.

They’ve only spoken about it once, Lisa and he. When he told her he was taking her to Cardiff, to the Hub. She’d stared at him, hope flickering in her eyes before fear came up and hid it. “They’ll kill us if they find out, Ianto. Not just me – they’ll execute you, too.” He'd met her gaze and nodded. “I know, cariad. But I won’t let them find out. I promise.” She’d studied at him for a long moment and then: “You always keep your promises.” They haven’t spoken about it again, but she knows he is in this to the death. She won’t listen to Keith if he tries to convince her otherwise, but what will Keith do then? _I have to get her into the Hub soon. I have to be rid of Keith as soon as possible._

It’s almost four in the morning but there's no point in sleeping: he'd have less than an hour, assuming he could even get to sleep. He knows Harkness is an early riser, so six is probably not too early to turn up. He can’t take the bike, but he’ll walk back to the van and then drive that to the Plass.

“I’m going to get ready.” He leaves the ward and heads to the shower for the third time in twenty-four hours. He needs to make himself presentable. _Like the suit by the way._ He’s only got one other suit and there’s no money to get a third. He’ll have to find time to get the sodden suit he’s wearing clean and dry. A few yards outside the bathroom he freezes in mid-step. _I’ll work for nothing._ Oh god, why did he say that? What if Harkness takes him at his word? Even if he gets her into the Hub within days, he’s still going to need money. If Harkness doesn’t pay him or takes him on some sort of unpaid trial period, then how is he going to manage?

He swallows hard and forces himself to start moving again. There is nothing he can do about it right now. It’s not going to be an unreasonable question to ask Harkness at some point within the first day or so. If Harkness gives him the answer he is now dreading…. he shakes his head roughly, jerks his head hard to one side, refusing to even allow the voice to start whispering.

He showers once more. The towels are more damp than wet, but only just and his skin feels clammy and cold. At least the Hub is heated. He goes to get dressed, but as he stands on one leg to pull on the grey suit trousers, he nearly falls. He clings to the wall, waiting for the dizziness to pass and his vision to clear. It’s exhaustion, pure and simple. He’s been awake for nearly 24 hours on less than four hours sleep, and if he’s had a total of twenty hours rest in the last week he’d be surprised.

He carefully places the trousers over the side of the suitcase and pulls out the small cloth bag he keeps hidden there. He’s used this only three times since they arrived in Cardiff, and now he has to use it again because not even endless coffee is going to get him through today.

He takes out one of the five remaining vials. Compound 1456; a surprisingly recent addition to the list of Torchwood's chemical aids. Its usefulness has been proven but it’s not going to be passed on to Her Majesty’s Armed Forces just yet awhile – there’s a few little wrinkles to be ironed out first. Like the fact that it’s a raging carcinogen, not to mention a proven mutagen and teratogen. But the last is a non-issue for him, the second hardly matters right now and the cancer risk is only of minimal concern: if this whole plan doesn’t work then he’ll be dead with three Torchwood bullets in his head long before he needs to worry about cancer. If it succeeds, he’ll just have to make sure he gets regular check-ups.

He locks the vial into the pump and snaps on a sterile needle pack. He straps the tourniquet round his left arm and moments later watches as the blue-grey liquid is forced into a vein. By the time he’s dismantled the injector and binned the used needle and the empty vial, the exhaustion has gone. He feels fully alert, and the burning ache of muscle fatigue has gone as well. He picks up his watch, noting the time as he puts it on. For the next eighteen hours, nothing short of the counter-compound is going to so much as tire him, but once that time limit is up he will crash so hard it’s going to hurt. A second injection within the next thirty-six hours runs the risk of bringing on a heart-attack, but so long as he’s back here at the hospital by midnight he should hold together.

He shaves and gets dressed, putting on shirt, suit and tie smoothly. _Whatever Harkness wants, Harkness gets._ This time, no voice whispers to him.

Just over an hour later he leaves the van parked by one of the language schools and heads towards the Tourist Office. He tries the door, but it’s locked. A moment later, he hears Harkness’s voice, the tinny sound making it clear it’s coming through a speaker.

“It’s six a.m.”


End file.
